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	INSIDE VIEW Magnetic resonance image of a patient's brain. Overlay shows where the brain is active while performing a language task, as quantified by functional MRI and an EEG electrode grid that was attached to the head. Such information can be used to plan and guide neurosurgery. JAMES DUNCAN, LAWRENCE STAB, AND OSAR SCROUNGER, YALE UNIVERSITY

The creation of the new institute was not without turf battles within NIH itself or without criticism by some outside groups. But in the end, support for the creation of NIBIB edged out the opposition.

"This is the one NIH institute that is the most quantitative and physical sciences-focused," says NIBIB Acting Director Donna J. Dean. "We will do things upon which every other NIH institute can draw."

"Many researchers approach biomedical problems from the perspective of engineering science," says Bruce Hasegawa, a professor of radiology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). "It's been hard for us to find a home for these developments. Traditionally, funding from NIH is very disease-focused."

The mission of NIBIB is, according to official documents, to "promote fundamental discoveries, design and development, and translation and assessment of technological capabilities in biomedical imaging and bioengineering, enabled by relevant areas of information science, physics, chemistry, mathematics, materials science, and computer science. The institute plans, conducts, fosters, and supports an integrated and coordinated program of research and research training that can be applied to a broad spectrum of biological processes, disorders, and diseases, as well as organ systems."

"The best argument for NIBIB," says Harvard University provost and former National Institute of Mental Health Director Steven E. Hyman, "is that NIH's healthy emphasis on hypothesis-driven biology and behavioral research can lead peer review study sections and institutes to undervalue technology development, especially when its relevance is broader than the mission of any one institute. A good argument could be made that technology development deserved a real focus within NIH."

"There is always resistance by the establishment whenever a new institute is formed," says National Institute of Arthritis & Musculoskeletal & Skin Diseases Director Stephen I. Katz regarding objections to NIBIB that have arisen within NIH. He says that NIBIB is, in fact, "critical to the future health of the nation." Katz was a member of the search committee that chose Pettigrew as the first NIBIB director.

"I think it's understandable that people with grants in their portfolio might not like losing some of those grants," Dean says about program officers at some of the other NIH institutes from which grants have been transferred to NIBIB. "I think it's the nature of change that people would find that upsetting," she adds. "Program staff invest considerable time and effort in developing their scientific portfolios; giving up cutting-edge research to the stewardship of others is painful. However, the important bottom line is that the work continues to be funded by NIH, albeit by a different institute."

Nonetheless, Dean says that the process was necessary to build a foundation for the NIBIB extramural grant program, and, she says, it was transparent, with ample opportunity for those affected by the transfers to voice their objections. "If we ever have to give up grants in the future," says Dean, "we will remember our experience and strive to do it in a collegial manner."

	Dean

"OUR GOAL is that NIBIB would be a home for research that is basic and crosscutting," says Edward C. Nagy, executive director of the Academy of Radiology Research (ARR). "That was the purpose of the grant transfers."

"I am pretty strongly opposed to the new institute," says Perry F. Renshaw, director of the Brain Imaging Center at McLean Hospital in Boston. "It is focused on a method instead of a disease.

"My fear is that the work we do [studying images of the brains of people who are addicted to drugs, for example] won't be fully valued in the new institute," adds Renshaw, who is also a member of the advisory council for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "There are instances where some areas of clinical research have not been particularly valued," he says, citing, for example, addiction research versus cancer research.

"There is a myopic hope that this will result in more funding grants for biomedical imaging," Renshaw says. "The fact is, it could go up; it could go down; it could stay the same."

Dean, who has guided the creation of NIBIB from its beginning in January 2002, says, "It's the most exciting thing I have done in my career to date." Today, a staff of 30 is in place, and Dean has assembled a basic framework for the institute's scientific program, which is funded at approximately $112 million in fiscal 2002. Now the program awaits Pettigrew, who is expected to begin his tenure as NIBIB director later this month.

At Emory University in Atlanta, Pettigrew has been a pioneer in dynamic three-dimensional imaging of the heart using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He was a codeveloper of the first computer software package specifically designed for cardiac imaging using MRI. He was not available for comment about NIBIB by C&EN's deadline.

Dean explains that the effort to create NIBIB reaches back some 25 years to a group called the Conjoint Committee on Diagnostic Radiology [Ann. Biomed. Eng., 30, 2 (2002)]. That group was sponsored by the American College of Radiology, the Association of University Radiologists, and the Society of Chairmen of Academic Radiology Departments.

In 1995, Dean continues, ARR was formed. The group focused its attention on biomedical imaging, specifically working toward establishing a new institute for imaging research at NIH. Today, ARR is an alliance of 25 professional organizations representing more than 40,000 radiologists and imaging scientists.

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