Project Grant R01EB037002

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) awarded the University of Wisconsin–Madison a $611,597 Project Grant effective June 1, 2026, through February 28, 2030, under CFDA 93.286 (Discovery and Applied Research for Technological Innovations to Improve Human Health). The award supports the development and validation of next-generation, confounder-corrected Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)-based Intra-Voxel Incoherent Motion (IVIM) methods for simultaneous quantification of blood perfusion and tissue microstructure. The research addresses critical technical limitations in current IVIM methods, including instability and poor precision, which have prevented widespread clinical application.

The funded research deliverables encompass three primary aims: (1) development and optimization of confounder-corrected IVIM to enable precise quantification across the entire liver; (2) ex vivo technical validation using phantoms and perfused human organs; and (3) in vivo technical and clinical validation in patients with chronic liver disease. By expanding IVIM acquisitions into optimized multi-dimensional sampling approaches and employing biophysical signal models for quantification, the project will produce imaging methodology with superior noise performance, test-retest repeatability, inter-reader reproducibility, and reproducibility across acquisition parameters, MR systems, field strengths, and anatomical regions. These advances are intended to facilitate the clinical translation and broader adoption of IVIM as a non-invasive diagnostic imaging technique requiring no ionizing radiation or exogenous contrast agents.