Guoqiang Yu, professor in the F. Joseph Halcomb III, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), has been awarded an R56 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant titled “Continuous and Longitudinal Monitoring of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism in Freely Moving Rodents” will receive $612,754 over 12 months to support his team to gather additional data for revision of a current R01 application.
With this grant, the team is taking on a major challenge in measuring cerebral hemodynamic and metabolic changes noninvasively on conscious, freely behaving subjects, which is not possible presently. The objective of this project is to develop and test a low-cost, fast, miniaturized, fiber-free, wearable optical imaging probe (device) which can be fixed on the head, allowing for transcranial measurements of cerebral blood flow and metabolism in conscious, freely behaving rodents (mice and rats). In combination with the team’s ongoing NIH-R21 studies in human subjects, completion of this study in rodents will generate a unique noninvasive, low-cost, fast, multiscale, and multimodal brain monitoring tool for both translational neuroscience research and clinical applications.
This collaborative effort is supported by an interdisciplinary team of engineers, scientists, and physiologists, including:
- Lei Chen, Ph.D. & MD, Research Assistant Professor, UK Department of Physiology
- Chong Huang, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor, UK F. Joseph Halcomb III, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering
- Kevin D. Donohue, Ph.D., Databeam Professor, UK Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Qiang Cheng, Ph.D., Associate Professor, UK Institute for Biomedical Informatics and Department of Computer Science
- Li Chen, Ph.D., Associate Professor, UK Department of Internal Medicine of the College of Medicine and the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Shared Resource Facility of Markey Cancer Center
“Dr. Yu is at the forefront of biomedical technology translation to help advance medical imaging and benefit patients. This is another example of his many successes,” said Guigen Zhang, Chair of the BME Department.
Professor Yu has taught and conducted research at UK since 2007.
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R56NS117587. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.