Mission

The IMAGINE Center is dedicated to research excellence in pediatric imaging and aims to provide the scientific community with advanced neuroimaging equipment and services to longitudinally study neurodevelopmental changes in children facing genetic risks, birth complications (including premature birth), and environmental factors (such as head injuries, psychosocial stress, substance abuse, etc.).

Our goal is to better characterise typical child brain maturation and developmental processes implicated in neurodevelopmental conditions, from birth through to adolescence, by establishing a premier scientific platform for neuropediatric research and the dissemination of knowledge.

The IMAGINE Center also serves private companies in Quebec, Canada, and internationally who lead research, innovation, and technological development projects within the field of pediatric neurodevelopment.

The mission of the IMAGINE Center is to support highly specialized and multidisciplinary research in pediatric neuroimaging with the aim to decrease the incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders through prevention, screening, early diagnosis, treatment, and the development of effective strategies to support families.

Objectives

• To provide a state-of-the-art pediatric imaging infrastructure and supply high-quality pediatric brain imaging protocols that are specifically designed for each age and neurodevelopmental condition.


• To create multimodal normative databases to better understand individual trajectories of typical and atypical brain development.


• To promote open science in the pediatric field and share knowledge with policymakers, decisionmakers, healthcare professionals, and the general public.


• To benefit the health of at-risk children by refining and testing early, effective, and innovative interventions.

Our Team

Our multidisciplinary team includes researchers and clinicians from CHU Sainte-Justine affiliated with the Université de Montréal and Polytechnique Montréal, as well as highly qualified staff with expertise in pediatric neuroimaging, neuroscience, and mental health, genomics/bioinformatics and functional genomics, epidemiology, clinical practice, and experimental and clinical health research.

Our Partners

The establishment of the IMAGINE Center was made possible thanks to major funding from the 2020 Canadian Foundation for Innovation competition and the collaboration with other partners in the field of neuroimaging..

 

Direction
Patricia Conrod, PhD, Director of IMAGINE Center
Gregory Lodygensky, MD, Co-Director of IMAGINE Center

Administration

Valérie Villeneuve, PhD, Head of scientific platforms
Marie Caillaud, PhD, research coordinator

Scientific managers - equipments 
MRI:
Gregory Lodygensky, MD, Manager
Josée Dubois, MD, Co-manager

EEG/NIRS:
Anne Gallagher, PhD, Manager
Guillaume Dumas, PhD, Co-Manager

Neuromodulation system:
Sarah Lippé, PhD, Manager
Alexander Weil, MD, FRCSC , FACS, Co-Manager
Aris Hadjinicolaou, MD, FRCPC, CSCN, Co-Manager

Material development for optimising pediatric neuroimaging conditions and data quality platform:
Julien Cohen-Adad, PhD, Manager
Mathieu Dehaes, PhD, Co-Manager

Data archive and integration platform:
Pierre Bellec, PhD, Responsable

Longitunal and multimodal data analysis plaform:
Miriam Beauchamp, PhD, Manager
Tomas Paus, MD, PhD, Co-Manager

Clinical validation of brain biomarkers platform:
Sébastien Jacquemont, MD, Manager
Elsa Rossignol, MD, MSc, Co-Manager

To prepare and initiate a new study at the IMAGINE Center and for more information regarding our infrastructure and services, please write to us at the following address: centre.imagine.hsj@ssss.gouv.qc.ca