$1.5M Grant Funds Prof. Calhoun's Brain Imaging Work

ECE Prof. Vince Calhoun recently received a $1.5 million grant from The National Institutes of Health for his brain imaging work.

The title of Calhoun's funded project is "Multivariate methods for identifying multitask/ multimodal brain-imaging biomarkers."

He is applying engineering principles to better analyze multimodal medical imaging data, including functional and structural magnetic resonance images (s/fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and electroencephalography (EEG) to see if a way can be found to combine or fuse the information in these different image types to differentiate control subjects from people diagnosed with disabilities like schizophrenia.

It's a promising approach in which few researchers worldwide have expertise.

The progress Calhoun and his team are making is earning the attention of the media. Portions of his work were publicized by the American Journal of Psychiatry's March issue in a paper that Calhoun and five colleagues coauthored. UNM Today reported on his work on April 4, and the Fall 2007 issue of the School of Engineering's magazine will include a feature story about his work at the MIND Institute. MIND also recently featured Calhoun in its first newsletter.

Calhoun is director of Image Analysis and MR Research at the MIND Institute, associate professor in UNM's Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, and adjunct associate professor with Yale University's Department of Psychiatry.

Before joining ECE at UNM, Calhoun was assistant clinical professor with Yale's Department of Psychiatry and director of the Medical Image Analysis Lab at the Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut.

Prof. Calhoun's Medical Image Analysis Laboratory website is here, and he can be reached at vcalhoun@unm.edu.