Center of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance, Lucknow

Brief History of CBMR

The Government of India, through the Department of Science & Technology (DST), the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Indian Councils of Medical and Agriculture Research (ICMR and ICAR) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) have supported activities on Magnetic Resonance (MR) in the country in a major way due to rapid developments in the field and its importance in diverse areas. There are two national facilities, several regional centers and many departmental and individual facilities established at various institutions and organizations in the country. The area that has not been given its due share of importance is biomedical MR dealing essentially with Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy (MRI and MRS), respectively. The field is developing at a rapid pace. The Functional MRI (fMRI), Micro-imaging and in vivo MRS are the subjects of direct relevance to the society and the national need and importance. There is no national level consolidated effort in the country that is extensively pursuing research in this field. The development of such a field in an exhaustive manner needs an active collaboration of experts in the inter-disciplinary areas, such as, medicine, NMR spectroscopy, biochemistry, electronics, computer science, mathematics and psychology. The CBMR aims to fill this gap. The strength and the unique feature of this center lie in involving leading experts of the country in its research programs. Further, due to rapid development of new technologies in NMR in general, majority of the already established facilities are not optimally utilized. Also, the subject of MR is now a full-fledged science and therefore, it needs proper training centers so that universities, research institutions and industrial organizations have periodic continuing-education programs for proper utilization of the national resources. To generate a national level debate on the issue, an All-India level brain-storming session was organized at SGPGIMS as a part of Science Day celebrations on February 28th 1999. The outcome of the session was that a national level inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary center of research and training be established at the SGPGIMS with the University of Allahabad, the Central Drug Research Institute Lucknow, and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur as the participating institutions. The CBMR was thus came to be established.

Achievements

Research and the national-level training pertaining to the New Dimensions of NMR in Medicine and Human Behavior, in collaboration with medical doctors and the university research-scholars and teachers, has been the main achievement of CBMR since its inception. In all, clinical experts and basic scientists covering 15 different super-specialties from various institutions have been closely collaborating with the Centre in diverse research problems. This has resulted in 42 research papers in high-impact journals of international repute, and 58 presentations in national and international conferences. The Centre has organized 14 workshops/training Programmes so far.