Duke Clinical Research Institute

As part of the Duke University School of Medicine, the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) is the world’s largest academic clinical research organization. It designs, implements, and executes innovative research grounded in the realities of patient care, led by physician scientists and statisticians, and supported by staff with deep expertise in operationalizing global studies.

Services provided by the DCRI include: early phase clinical research (phase I), phase II/III development, mega-trials (> 5,000 patients), device trials, and post-marketing surveillance/late-phase trials. The DCRI offers full-service capabilities at every stage of clinical development, from study design and regulatory strategy to participant recruitment and safety surveillance to data management. With more than 840 operational employees, the DCRI also manages clinical trial communication, coordination, and engagement. To learn more about these services, click here.

NOTICE: The DCRI has provided this service description and granted permission for publication. For questions, please contact Willette Wilkins, the Head of Strategic Planning, Development, and Corporate Communications.

Brain Imaging & Analysis Center

As part of the Duke University Medical Center, the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center (BIAC) supports research techniques in neuroimaging and their incorporation into basic and translational neuroscience. The BIAC comprises three research groups in Imaging and Analysis Methodology, Translational Neuroimaging, and Cognitive Neuroimaging. These groups are actively funded by grants from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Aging, National Institute of Drug Abuse, and National Science Foundation. Additional significant funding also comes from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The center also houses two research-dedicated whole-body 3T human scanners (both operating on the newest GE MR750 platforms); and its computing facilities consist of a high-speed network of Windows and Linux servers, workstations, and cluster nodes.

MRI Scanners: The BIAC houses two GE UltraHigh Performance (UHP) 3.0 Tesla (T) scanners, offering a unified platform and parallel access for research-dedicated human imaging. Through a productive collaboration with the GE Healthcare, both scanners run on the latest GE UHP platform, based on the GE Premier system architecture. Compared to the standard Premier products, the two systems have upgraded 60-cm high-power torque-balanced gradient coils that have gradient strengths at 100 mT/m (constant mode) and 113 mT/m (burst mode), with a slew rate of 250 T/m/s.

Computing Facilities: The BIAC's computational cluster, called Hugin, has 30 blades with a total of 720 Intel Xeon processor cores and 5 TB of memory. The center also has a NetApp AFF-A800 all-flash solid-state storage server, providing >200 TB of enterprise class disk storage.

NOTICE: The BAIC has provided this service description and granted permission for publication. For questions, please contact Dr. Allen Song, the Director of the Center for Brain Imaging and Analysis.