The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine received a $32.9 million grant Thursday to begin a 10-year collaborative project that will create a new imaging facility in the Wisconsin Institutes of Medical Research.
The UW-Madison School of Medicine will collaborate with Public Health, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and General Electric Healthcare on the project, which marks a 30-year-long partnership between UW-Madison and GE.
Under the grant, UW-Madison medical researchers will work with GE Healthcare to tailor imaging technologies to improve patient diagnosis.
“What GE does is it provides us with a scanner, which you can imagine as a huge iPad,” School of Medicine and Public Health Radiology Department Chair Dr. Thomas Grist said. “Our job is to develop apps for the MRI scanner to make it useful for doctors.”
Researchers will mostly work on modifying existing scanner software to be compatible with new medical applications, for example to make 3-dimensional images of the heart. The project will be reviewed annually to check its progress.
According to Grist, the imaging technology improved by this program will have broad usage across medical fields and in non-medical research. Grist believes UW-Hospital’s imaging technology is a factor in its high-rated patient care.
“One of the reasons why UW-Hospital is rated number one in Wisconsin and one of the top hospitals in the nation is the clear recognition that our imaging clinical care is the best in the world,” Grist said. “This is only going to enhance that more.”
