Research

Clinical Research

The Department of Radiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC conducts more than 40 active clinical studies spanning all ten subspecialty divisions, from neuroradiology and nuclear medicine to interventional radiology and emergency imaging. Our research focuses on translating novel imaging techniques directly into clinical tools: developing and validating quantitative MRI methods, building predictive radiomics models, advancing molecular imaging probes, and applying deep learning to diagnostic imaging.

Our affiliated labs and research programs are listed below. Faculty regularly secure NIH and foundation grants and present at national radiology conferences including RSNA, ARRS, and the Society of Interventional Radiology annual meetings.

Researcher drawing digitally on a computer screen

Basic Science Research

Our pre-clinical and basic science research programs span molecular imaging, quantitative MRI, and radiomics. Faculty labs develop novel radiotracers and imaging probes for cancer, cardiovascular, and neurological disease, translate advanced MRI techniques into clinical tools, and build computational models that extract predictive data from standard-of-care images. The USC Molecular Imaging Center, the Fan MRI Laboratory, and the USC Radiomics Lab each represent distinct areas of this work. Details on each lab are listed below.

Fan Magnetic Resonance (MR) Imaging Research Lab

Dr. Zhaoyang Fan’s Laboratory conducts research on the development and clinical translation of novel magnetic resonance imaging techniques. Our efforts are focused on broad clinical applications, including diagnosis and characterization of cardio- and neuro-vascular diseases, image-guided radiation therapy, quantitative body imaging, and machine learning. Our mission is to develop innovative, accurate, and reliable MR imaging solutions to achieve precise disease management.

For additional information about their activities, explore their website directly here:
Visit the Fan Magnetic Lab

Radiomics Lab

The USC Radiomics group focuses on exploring methods of extracting quantifiable features from radiologic images. Medical images are not just pictures but are in fact data. Extracting and mining quantitative information through high-throughput analysis adds supplemental information to traditional visual interpretation.

These features can be combined with clinical, laboratory, genomic, and epigenetic data to improve identification of diagnostic and prognostic features. Radiomics data are in a mineable form that can be used to build descriptive and predictive models relating image features to phenotypes or gene-protein signatures. Our group has developed workflows and algorithms to extract hundreds of quantifiable features from standard-of-care medical images.

USC Molecular Imaging Center (MIC)

The mission of the USC Molecular Imaging Center is to promote the use of imaging to:

Rapidly and effectively translate developments in cellular and molecular biology, chemistry, neurosciences, physics, computer sciences, engineering, and instrumentation into improvements in cancer patient care
Facilitate further advances in the understanding of the molecular basis of disease
Train future investigators who will have the requisite multidisciplinary skills to effectively lead the expansion of molecular medical techniques

There is an ever-increasing demand for new and more sophisticated imaging probes for experimental research and clinical application, especially with the escalation of molecular medicine approaches to therapy design. Our vision is for the USC MIC to have a comprehensive imaging program focused on the development of new radiotracers and non-radioactive biological probes for use in interdisciplinary biomedical research and imaging.

Visit the USC MIC Lab