The McConnell Brain Imaging Centre is everything about neuroimaging |
The mission of the BIC is to understand the structure and function of the brain, in health and disease, through the development of novel neuroscience approaches and neuroimaging methods, and thereby facilitate translation into clinical care. |
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We have celebrated our first 30 years as the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre in 2015.Please take a moment to leave a note on our message board, and browse the picture gallery of our anniversary event. ![]() Follow us on Facebook! |
The BIC is a one-of-a-kind research centre and multimodal platform entirely dedicated to neuroimaging. It is integrated to the Montreal Neurological Institute and hospital, a research and clinical flagship at McGill University, a top research-intensive institution.
A productive research centre
The research performed at the BIC covers all aspects of neuroimaging: from instrumentation, acquisition, analysis methods and practical software solutions, to clinical and systems neuroscience. Our >100 core researchers and trainees have published more than 1,000 journal articles and have raised $100'sM in research grants so far.
One of the world largest multimodal imaging platforms
The BIC provides neuroimaging platform services to a community of more than 110 scientists, generates 3,500 research scans a year in high-field MRI (1.5T, 3T, small-bore 7T and in 2017, the first 7T large-bore scanner in Quebec) with simultaneous TMS and high-density EEG, high-resolution PET and micro-PET, and real-time MEG/EEG. Our radiochemistry lab produces the longest catalogue of radiotracers in Canada. The BIC's computing backbone offers considerable data storage capacity and distributed grid computing solutions to all BIC users. Importantly, our research is shared with >30,000 registered users worldwide through software and reference datasets. Multiple successful spin-off biomedical companies were created by current and previous BIC members over the past 30 years.
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Learn more about our Centre's highlights
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Book an MRI, PET, SPECT, MEG scan and PET/SPECT radiotracers now
New faces @ The BIC
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Prof David Rudko
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Prof Christine Tardif
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Dr. Stephan Blinder
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Chris HsiaoNuclear Medicine Technologist, PET UnitWe're very pleased to share with everyone the great news that Mr. Chris Hsiao is joining our BIC core staff at the PET Unit. Chris is a registered Nuclear Medicine Technologist, with four years of experience working at St. Mary's and Royal-Victoria Hospitals. He also has received training in Biochemistry at Concordia University, CT Imaging at CAMRT, and Diagnostic Ultrasound at Ahuntsic College. Chris augments our key human resources at the PET Unit in response to the increased research demand in the modality. |
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Ted StraussManager, Data ResourcesTruly happy to see Ted join our core staff as Manager, Data Resources. Ted has 12+ years experience as a programmer, database administrator and technology generalist in the industry and academia. He will assist in creating a strategy and enabling the tools for short- and long-term data management over all modalities used at our Centre, all in coordination with the developments of the MNI's open-science infrastructure. |
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Prof Boris Bernhardt, PhDAssistant Professor, BIC Principal InvestigatorWe are fortunate to welcome Dr. Boris Bernhardt as BIC core Faculty Member as of August 1, 2016. Boris is a new Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill and a member of the Epilepsy research group at the MNI. He obtained his PhD in Neuroscience at McGill in 2011 and carried out postdoctoral studies at the Max-Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. Boris heads the newly-founded Multimodal Imaging and Connectome Analysis Lab. The research is centered on the development of integrated analysis approaches to characterize neuroanatomical variability and its relation to function and behaviour in healthy and diseased populations, particularly epilepsy and autism spectrum conditions. The work employs multimodal neuroimaging, task-based assessments of cognitive and affective functions, as well as statistical modelling and pattern learning. |
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Prof Bratislav Misic, PhDAssistant Professor, BIC Principal InvestigatorWe have the greatest pleasure to announce that as of March 1st 2016, Dr. Bratislav Misic has joined our Centre as Assistant Professor of Neurology & Neurosurgery, and new core BIC Principal Investigator. |
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Dr. Iness Hammami, PhDResearch Assistant, CyclotronIness will be responsible for the synthesis and quality control of FDG radiopharmaceutical for PET imaging. Iness has obtained her Bachelor degree in Chemical – Biopharmaceutical Engineering from Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal. She pursued doctoral studies in Metabolic Engineering at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, in collaboration with the Instituto Oncologico Veneto (Italy). Her research focused on metabolic events in immunosuppression, in the context of identifying novel targets for immunotherapy. After graduating in 2011, she was a postdoc fellow at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal where she specialized in metabolic modeling. In 2013, she joined McGill as post-doctoral fellow in the department of Microbiology and Immunology where she investigated the metabolic profile of tolerogenic and activated dendritic cells. |
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Qian Ying (Sandy) Li, MScResearch Assistant, CyclotronSandy has obtained her Bachelor degree in Biochemistry from McGill University. Her first profesional experience has been with Agat Laboratories, as Analytical Chemist. She then completed her training with a Masters degree in Chemistry at Concordia University in 2012. Her research project focused on the development of bimodal nanoparticles based contrast agents for MRI and optical imaging. She now specializes in the synthesis of lanthanide complexes, lanthanide doped nanoparticles and the surface functionalization of nanoparticles for biological application. Sandy is one of our newest recruits of our Cyclotron unit: she is responsible for the synthesis of radiopharmaceuticals for PET imaging. |
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Dr. Paul Gravel, PhDResearch Assistant, PET Unit
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Prof Simon Ducharme, MDAssistant Professor, BIC Principal InvestigatorDr. Ducharme has a medical degree from the Université de Montréal and a Masters from McGill University. He completed his residency in Psychiatry at McGill in 2012, and a fellowship in Behavioral Neurology & Neuropsychiatry at Harvard University in 2014. He is a Neuropsychiatrist at the Montreal Neurological Institute/MUHC, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry, and an associate member in the Department of Neurology. Dr. Ducharme studies morphometric analyses of structural MRI (e.g., cortical thickness) as an early diagnostic and prognostic biomarker of frontotemporal dementia. |
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Prof Rick Hoge, PhDAssociate Professor & Director, MRI Unit, BIC Principal InvestigatorRick has trained at McGill and has done research at Harvard Medical School, MIT, and the University of Montreal before returning to the MNI as our new Director of MRI Research. As such, Rick is a key contact person to help you optimize and design your MRI studies on our large-bore 1.5-T and 3-T scanners and the 7-T small bore. |
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Prof Gassan Massarweh, PhDAssistant Professor & Director, Cyclotron, BIC Principal InvestigatorGassan (PhD, U Hamburg) has worked at UQAM, the MNI, then as Head of the Radiochemistry Unit at Dalhousie and as Head of Cyclotron at the CRCHUM. We are very fortunate that all BIC users can now benefit from Gassan’s tremendous experience in radiosynthesis. With Dr Jean-Paul Soucy (PET Medical Director), Gassan is a key resource person to make your PET projects successful. |
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Prof Alexey Kostikov, PhDAssistant Professor, Cyclotron, BIC Principal InvestigatorAlexey has trained in Chemistry at Saint-Petersburg State U (Russia) and at U of Georgia (USA). He worked at Syracuse U before joining our PET program in 2009, as a Research Associate and now as a faculty member. Alex specializes in the synthesis of radiotracers for basic and clinical neuroscience research. His current research focus is on new techniques for rapid and efficient radiolabeling of biologically active macromolecules such as peptides. |