Radiology

Research

Mayo Clinic is the first academic center with a cyclotron facility in Northeast Florida that is approved by the FDA for patient care.

The cyclotron on Mayo Clinic's campus in Jacksonville, Florida

A Mayo Clinic radiology engineer demonstrates the inner workings of a recently installed cyclotron at Mayo Clinic's Florida campus. A cyclotron allows for injectable radioactive compounds (radiopharmaceuticals) required for PET scanning and nuclear medicine therapies to be made on-site for research and for advanced diagnostic tests.

Mayo Clinic ranks in the top 10 nationally for National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding among radiology departments. Recent annual funding for its research endeavors exceeds $50 million, with 88% of that from external sources, including 56 NIH federal research awards and 39 industry awards.

Collaboration among radiologists, physicists and dedicated research scientists keeps the clinic at the leading edge of developing, testing and improving imaging technology. Their proven innovations are brought into clinical practice to help people as quickly and safely as possible. The clinic's radiology researchers also share their results of more than 900 radiology research publications each year. This helps ensure that their findings may benefit people worldwide.

Examples of research successes that improve people's lives include:

CT imaging for precise characterization of disease response
Spectral CT imaging
Dual-source CT for diagnosis of coronary artery disease
Photon-counting-detector CT and other emerging CT technologies
Noninvasive diagnosis of urinary stones
High-detail imaging of the brain for Alzheimer's disease
Radiation dose reduction
PET/MR for improved characterization of cancer response
Noninvasive mapping of the vascular system
Machine learning for identifying genomic properties of cancer
Molecular breast imaging
Contrast-enhanced mammography
MR-guided breast biopsies
MR-guided focused ultrasound ablation applications
MR elastography to characterize liver disease
MR elastography applications, including research on breast MR elastography
Image-guided percutaneous tumor ablation (advancing field of interventional oncology)
Development of computer-aided image assessment software

For more information, see the Department of Radiology's research website.

Clinical trials

Mayo Clinic researchers conduct clinical trials to find new ways to use radiologic technology and procedures. You may have the opportunity to participate in clinical trials that give you the chance to try experimental treatments. Learn more about current radiology clinical trials at Mayo Clinic.