Avery Berman
Assistant Professor, Department of Physics
Professor Berman leads Carleton University’s Functional Neuroimaging Physics Lab and is a Scientist at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre’s Institute of Mental Health Research (IMHR). His research involves the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques that image brain activity and microvascular physiology with increasing spatial resolution and increased physiological sensitivity and specificity.
Functional MRI is non-invasive and does not use ionizing radiation, which has made it the most widely used imaging modality for the non-invasive study of the organization of the human brain. The MRI signal contains rich information related to the underlying brain physiology.
With laboratory space located at IMHR, his team utilizes the research-dedicated 3-T hybrid PET-MRI system to develop acquisition and analysis strategies to extract this physiological information to improve our interpretation of functional MRI signals and to provide quantitative biomarkers for studying mental health and neurological disorders.