The Gordon Center for Medical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School is a multidisciplinary research center dedicated to improving patient care by developing and promoting new biomedical imaging technologies used in both diagnosis and therapy of cardiovascular disease, CNS disorders and cancer. Our main activities include research, training, and translation of innovative research into developing clinically viable imaging of disease-promoting inflammatory pathways. 

Created in 2015 with an endowment from the Bernard and Sophia Gordon Foundation, the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging is part of MGH’s Division of Radiological Sciences where the first positron-imaging device was invented. As early as the 1950s, a series of important milestones were achieved at MGH, including the MGH-positron (2D) cameras, the filtered backprojection algorithm (Chesler) and multiple gated cardiac imaging (Alpert). Today, we strive to be a collaborative hub within the Boston Imaging community and beyond, connecting imaging scientists to clinicians and basic researchers.

Imaging technology has made astonishing progress over the last decades. Imaging procedures have become more sensitive, more specific and are now able to detect small, early-stage pathologies deep inside the body. Among the next conceptual leaps for imaging is to achieve molecular specificity, i.e. the ability to detect specific molecules that promote either disease or recovery induced by therapeutics. The Gordon Center strives to be a centerpiece in this endeavor: we focus on inflammation-related target discovery with transcriptomics, development of bespoke imaging methodology, translation to clinical application and training of the next generation of scientists and engineers in medical imaging. These activities stress cross-training during academic research sponsored by federal agencies, foundations and industrial collaborations.