Brain Imaging Discoveries Translated into Practice at New Center

Although the road from medical discovery to clinical delivery is often long and bumpy, translational research can provide the engine to move the process along.

John Griffin, M.D. Brain Science Institute at The Johns Hopkins Institute

Susumu Mori, Ph.D. The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

To that end, the Brain Science Institute (BSI) at The Johns Hopkins Institute in Baltimore is underwriting the Center for Brain Imaging Science (CBIS), a new enterprise that aims to channel expertise from various John Hopkins imaging centers into creating a surge, university-wide, in the understanding and use of imaging techniques for neuroscience research. The virtual center opened in June.

"There's a widespread perception that imaging is what drives new discoveries and there is new excitement in brain research," said John Griffin, M.D., director of BSI. "However, it is hard to have an integrated entry program for imaging. What we set out to do was create a program that would make it easy for neuroscience investigators who wanted to ask questions using imaging to learn the basics about how to do it." BSI co-directors are Michael Miller, Ph.D., and Marilyn Albert, Ph.D.

Support from BSI will ensure that the new center has the initial resources to develop pilot studies and protocols. The faculty anticipates that approved projects will become self-supporting through grants and other funding.

Through its support of the center, BSI leaders plan to leverage improved imaging on their own projects, thus upholding the traditional meaning of "translational" research. Leaders said they hope this paves the way for new therapies for brain diseases and psychological and behavioral disorders.

Bringing together many disciplines from neurology, psychiatry and radiology also creates a core group of experts whose experience can be utilized in ferreting out the best questions and most compelling ideas to benefit patients.

"Right now there is a very high barrier for getting studies started; to knowing where and how to start, who you talk to, and to have the ear of someone who is an expert in helping decide the best way to ask questions," said Dr. Griffin.

Improving Imaging Analysis Critical

Providing training to a new generation of translational researchers is one plan for the new center that leaders find most compelling. Susumu Mori, Ph.D., a professor of radiology at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, explained: "Now high-quality MR imaging and PET scanners are available. Their new technology lets users access state-of-the-art capabilities just by pushing buttons. Yet we're victims of our own success—quality images are so easily generated that the volume overwhelms researchers and clinicians."

The newly opened Center for Brain Imaging Science (CBIS) at The Johns Hopkins Institute aims to channel imaging expertise in the understanding and use of imaging techniques for neuroscience research, said John Griffin, M.D., director of the Brain Science Institute at The Johns Hopkins Institute. Dr. Griffin is pictured (left) at CBIS, with Ahmet Hoke, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at Hopkins. Image courtesy of The John Hopkins Institute

The new bottleneck, Dr. Mori said, lies in not being able to quantify information from a glut of images or interpret it rapidly enough. Access to good image analysis must increase, according to A. Gregory Sorensen, M.D., a professor in the Department of Radiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

"Researchers are figuring out what clinicians have known for a long time," said Dr. Sorensen. "An imaging test is not like a blood test; you actually need someone to help you interpret it. Clinicians know that radiologists often provide high value. This center is basically saying, 'We researchers need some help too.'"

Dr. Sorensen believes initiatives like the one at Johns Hopkins shine a light on the uneven progress in achieving bench-to-bedside delivery of new science. "Every center wonders how some centers magically take things from lab to clinic on occasion and don't do it all the time," he said. "Other centers don't seem to do it at all. Where is the spark?

"Devoting resources to the process of getting ideas from one part of the laboratory to a part closer to the clinic is a complicated enterprise," Dr. Sorensen continued. "These guys are trying what they think might work best in their local environment. It's testimony to the fact that people are frustrated because it's harder than they thought. They're visionary enough to not throw up their hands but to say, 'Hey, let's do something about it.'"

Researchers Identify Goals

Plans for CBIS include centralizing services for image analysis, particularly for projects with high-quality anatomical images, and opening two image analysis work stations to service research needs.

Once high-quality images are generated, the core of faculty experts serves as a bridge to analysis in several ways. For one, it offers individual and group training in the most widely used image analysis techniques. This educational arm of CBIS will make computers and training available on a daily basis, a service that is expected to generate strong demand within the Hopkins community. Dr. Griffin said competition for training and research dollars within the new center may become fierce.

"The sky's the limit, and that is actually a problem," said Dr. Griffin. "As this gets off the ground there will be a need to actively compete to get projects supported by the core. It really depends on having the resources to do it. We're able to direct them toward what we think are the best questions that will in effect move the field forward quickly."

How will the faculty and staff at Hopkins know whether the new center has made a critical difference in bringing research ideas into clinical practice? Dr. Griffin has already identified goals he hopes researchers achieve.

First, he is looking for developments that change thinking within specific fields being investigated. Dr. Griffin said he also hopes, "imaging becomes a true core across the institution—more widely used and more often put into the planning about how to ask questions. We want to end up with a larger core of faculty who are sophisticated in thinking about imaging."