New Mount Sinai institute to study imaging, biomechanical tech

The Mount Sinai Health System is creating a Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Institute to establish research and training programs for its graduate and medical students.

The new institute is expected to develop medical interventions in the fields of imaging, nanomedicine, artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors, medical devices and computer vision technologies, such as virtual, augmented and extended reality.

Further development and work in these technologies have the capability to transform patient care.

The institute is expected to be open early next and recruit at least nine investigators and their teams. The researchers will join existing Mount Sinai teams to develop new biomedical engineering and imaging technologies to improve the detection, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of a wide range of human diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular and neurological diseases.

“Our imaging and nanomedicine programs are leaders in the development and application of these novel technologies to improve patients’ diagnosis and treatment,” explains Zahi Fayad, director of the BMEII. “By integrating artificial intelligence, sensors, robotics, and virtual reality into our programs, the BMEII will take a transformative leap forward in the implementation of next generation medicine and healthcare for our patients and society.”

“The creation of Mount Sinai’s Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Institute represents a crucial milestone for our medical center,” says Eric J. Nestler, MD, Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience, Director of the Friedman Brain Institute, and Dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs. “Mount Sinai already has established expertise in several areas of imaging and biomedical engineering, and we look to further leverage this excellence in creating one of the nation’s leading efforts in this exciting area of medical research.”

Investigators at the BMEII will create new computational tools and algorithms to accelerate and improve the way radiologists generate, interpret, and deploy clinical imaging technologies to improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis. They will build on Mount Sinai research on radiology augmentation technologies that can rapidly triage the severity of neurologic injuries, accurately characterize the type of cancer a patient may have, and identify the early presence of coronary disease before it was thought to be possible.

Another goal will be to streamline the workflow of radiologists, giving clinicians the freedom to focus on the most complex cases. These advancements will lead to earlier detection of a wide range of diseases.

The new institute also will work on research on medical devices, wearable technologies and advanced robotic surgery, to name a few.