OCMR Achievements and Future Goals
Since our foundation in 2001, we have performed over 56,000 scans. This includes over 18,000 research scans and around 38,000 heart scans for NHS and private patients.
* in 2020 COVID-19 lock-down measures meant that there were 4 months with no research scans conducted
Researchers at OCMR have had great success in attracting external funding from grant bodies including the British Heart Foundation (BHF), Medical Research Council (MRC), Wellcome Trust and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
Publications and Impact:
OCMR have published over 700 peer reviewed papers and manuscripts, many in high impact journals. These articles have been cited 30,198 times. The mean impact factor for these papers is 17.5
Investigator Awards:
OCMR provides a strong supportive atmosphere to nurture new researchers, our researchers have achieved 35 Young Investigator Awards since 2004.
The future
We are a growing unit. In 2015, with the support of an infrastructure grant from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) we added an extra floor to our building to increase research and teaching space. In 2017, again with the assistance of an infrastructure grant from BHF we installed a third MRI scanner to enable us to expand our research capacity. We have also recently created an imaging core lab which provides an image analysis service for multicentre studies. Our future research themes will include:
- Continue proof-of-principle studies and MR physics development, eg 13C-Hyperpolarizer, 7T clinical application, Parametric mapping, DTI, 4D flow, Other organs –Liver, spleen, multiorgan imaging
- Image analysis group/core lab
- Lead/co-lead large-scale multicentre clinical trials
- Build on HCMR (an international registry of 44 sites to study 2750 HCM patients, to change the paradigm of risk stratification, using CMR, genetic and biomarker analyses). Extend follow up to 10 years, imaging repeat.
- Imaging for large scale population studies, eg UK Biobank/Big Data Institute