CAMRIC
Centre for Advanced Magnetic Resonance In Cardiology
CAMRIC was founded in 2000 following the award of a British Heart Foundation grant for £1.3M as part of its Cardiovascular Initiative to improve research infrastructure. As a new BHF research centre, CAMRIC aims to develop and apply Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) techniques in clinical cardiology through close collaboration with the National Heart and Lung Institute in Imperial College and its Director Professor Philip Poole-Wilson as the principal applicant. CAMRIC is directed by Dr Dudley Pennell who has forged a new research collaboration with Siemens with the provision of a dedicated CMR scanner (Sonata), a developmental program and on-site specialist technical-developmental expertise with the new appointment of Dr Christine Lorenz formerly from St Louis, USA. The developmental program will focus on a multi-disciplinary approach to solving key problem areas for CMR including the development of robust clinical sequences and protocols (Dr David Firmin, Director of Physics), the validation of techniques in large patient groups with key comparisons with other established techniques for efficacy and cost effectiveness, and the development of image-processing techniques to present the data in a clinical fashion which is readily appreciable (Dr Guang-Zhong Yang, Head of Computer Science). CAMRIC commences scanning on September 1st 2000.