November 2, 2007
Purdue, community officials celebrate opening of new MRI center to focus on patient care, research
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -
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The 7,800-square-foot MRI center, called InnerVision West, provides a 3-Tesla MRI scanner that offers enhanced resolution over conventional 1.5-Tesla MRI scanners. It is the first machine of this field strength in north-central Indiana.
"The MRI center is a partnership among Purdue University, Purdue Research Foundation, St. Elizabeth Regional Health, Unity Health Care and GE Healthcare," said Morgan R. Olsen, Purdue executive vice president and treasurer. "This new facility is an outstanding example of how Purdue and our community can partner with the private sector to meet the needs of people and the opportunities of research."
The 26,000-square-foot LakeView Technology Center is located at 3482 McClure Ave. In addition to the MRI center, the new building will house:
* A 5,500-square-foot restaurant aimed at the business lunch customer and a casual, yet upscale, dinner crowd.
* A 1,500-square-foot coffee shop that is separate from the restaurant.
* An 8,300-square-foot area for Simulex Inc., a Purdue Research Park-based firm currently located in the Purdue Technology Center.
"This new building is located in the Purdue Research Park's Phase II development just south of Kalberer Road," said Joseph B. Hornett, senior vice president, treasurer and chief operating officer of the Purdue Research Foundation, which owns and operates the research park. "This dedication continues the positive expansion of the park and meets our mission in building economic development for the area and state, as well as providing a needed service for the community."
This is the second building to be developed at the Purdue Research Park by Stephen Shook, managing member of Lafayette, Ind.-based SRJ McClure Development I LLC, the organization that owns the facility. The structure was built by the Indianapolis-based builder Duke Construction. The first building, which opened in 2006, was the International Technology Center, a 65,000-square-foot research park building that features a full-scale health club and six office tenants. The new building has a similar design, utilizing tilt-up construction panels.
"We know that the Purdue Research Park is the place to be for new and growing high-tech companies, and we want to be part of the growth," said Shook, managing member of SRJ McClure. "Constructing this building has been an experience in partnerships, and I am very proud to be associated with the MRI center, Simulex and all we plan to do with the building."
Purdue University previously collaborated with GE Healthcare on developing safety studies for GE's fastscan magnetic resonance techniques. The university also has partnered with GE Healthcare on the company's CT systems.
"The vision for this MRI center began a number of years ago when several faculty members realized the need for a 3-Tesla MRI machine," said George Wodicka, professor and head of Purdue's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. "With this new machine, we will be able to push the research frontier that spans many disciplines, including psychology, veterinary medicine, and speech and hearing sciences."
Magnetic resonance imaging is a non-invasive method that allows physicians to "see" internal tissues by using magnetic fields to interact with the protons in the patient's body. The magnetic field in an MRI system is rated using a unit of measure known as Tesla or "T." The unit of measure is named for Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American physicist, inventor and electrical engineer who discovered magnetic inductivity, the process that makes magnetic resonance imaging possible. Three Tesla (3T) is equivalent to 60,000 times the Earth's magnetic field.
"The idea for this project was hatched five years ago this month due to a chance meeting between me and Charlie Bowman, a Purdue professor of electrical and biomedical engineering, and later with Tom Talavage, a Purdue professor of electrical engineering who performs research on MR scanners," said Dr. John Fiederlein, a physician with InnerVision West. "The fruition of this project brings the latest in technology to the physicians and patients of the region and provides a fabulous tool for many research endeavors by Purdue researchers."
Some of the procedures that the 3-T MRI system will particularly benefit include magnetic resonance angiography; neurological/brain imaging; spine studies; orthopedic, including elbow, wrist, hip, knee, foot and ankle; prostate; pelvis; abdominal; spectroscopy; brain fiber tracking; and functional neuroimaging.
"The exciting part of this project is that there is a ton of potential for this MR scanner," said Terry Wilson, president and CEO of St. Elizabeth Regional Health (formerly Greater Lafayette Health Services). "It has been a wonderful opportunity to partner with Purdue, GE Healthcare, Lafayette Radiology, Unity and others on this project."
The new machine is expected to scan approximately eight patients per day, with individual scan times of 30-60 minutes - similar to that of standard scanners. The center will be staffed by three to five people.
The south end of the building will feature a 5,500-square-foot restaurant. Located off the 1,000-square-foot commons at the building's center, adjacent to the restaurant, will be a 1,500-square-foot coffee shop that will not be connected with the restaurant.
Simulex, a company established in 1999 by Alok Chaturvedi, a Purdue professor of management and chairman and CEO of the company, will relocate into the remainder of the new facility's space.
Simulex provides fully functioning synthetic environments that enable government and business customers to gain insights into complex situations. The technology, called Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation (SEAS), was developed at Purdue and is the business analogue of military war gaming. It provides continuously running artificial theaters consisting of interlinked individuals, organizations, institutions, infrastructures and geographies. These theaters are populated with virtual entities with parameters established by real-world data. Within these theaters, customers can anticipate and shape competitive reactions to their actions and consequently predict and evaluate future courses of action.
The technology has been used by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, Naval Air Command, U.S. Army Recruiting Command and Fortune 500 companies for analysis, planning and training.
Simulex currently has 35 employees and has offices in the Purdue Research Park, San Francisco, Atlanta and Norfolk, Va., as well as a subsidiary in India.
About Purdue Research Park
Purdue Research Park (https://www.purdueresearchpark.com ) encompasses 591 acres in West Lafayette, Ind., and is home to the largest university-affiliated business incubator complex in the nation. Within the park, 140 businesses, of which more than 90 are high-tech, employ more than 2,900 people. The Association of University Research Parks recognized Purdue Research Park for Excellence in Technology Transfer in 2005, and the park received the organization's Research/Science Park Company of the Year Award of Excellence in 2004.
About Unity Healthcare
Unity Healthcare has about 75 general and specialty physicians operating from Unity's state-of-the-art medical facility and office in Lafayette's surrounding communities providing care for more than 200,000 patients per year. Unity Healthcare physicians independently offer allergy and asthma, anesthesiology, gastroenterology, general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, occupational medicine, ophthalmology, orthopedics, orthopedic, spinal surgery, otolaryngology, pain management, pediatrics, physical therapy, plastic surgery, podiatry, primary care, psychology, radiology, radiation oncology, urology, venous medicine services and many others.
About St. Elizabeth Regional Health
St. Elizabeth Regional Health is a member of the Sisters of St. Francis Health Services system. The Sisters of St. Francis began its mission in the United States with the founding of St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Lafayette in 1875, and through the course of more than 130 years, the system has grown into a leading Midwest health-care system with 11 hospitals in Indiana and two hospitals in Illinois.
About InnerVision Advanced Medical Imaging
Unity Healthcare opened InnerVision Advanced Medical Imaging Center in the Unity Medical Center on Creasy Lane in October of 2000 and became a joint venture with the St. Elizabeth Regional Health in September of 2005. The center provides computed tomography, ultrasound, bone densitometry, X-ray, nuclear medicine and position emission tomography services to the residents and physicians of Tippecanoe County and the surrounding areas.
To the Purdue Research Park, https://www.purdueresearchpark.com
PHOTO CAPTION:
Andrew Brightman of Lafayette, Ind., listens as Laura Young, an MRI technical adviser with InnerVision West, explains how a magnetic imaging machine operates. Brightman was among those touring the new LakeView Technology Center that was dedicated Friday (Nov. 2) at the Purdue Research Park. The MRI center is a partnership among Purdue University, Purdue Research Foundation, St. Elizabeth Regional Health, Unity Health Care and GE Healthcare. The 26,000-square-foot building houses the MRI center, a restaurant, coffee shop and Simulex Inc., a high-tech company currently located in the Purdue Technology Center. SRJ McClure Development I LLC of West Lafayette, Ind., owns the structure. The MRI scanner is one of only two in Indiana with a 3-Tesla imaging ability, which is about twice the imaging strength of a traditional scanner. (Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)
A publication-quality photo is available at https://www.purdue.edu/uns/images/+2007/PRP-LakeView.jpg
Writer: Cynthia Sequin, (765) 494-4192, casequin@prf.org
Sources: Steve Shook, sshook@shook.com
Joseph Hornett, (765) 494-8645, jbhornett@prf.org
George Wodicka, (765) 494-2998, wodicka@purdue.edu
Howard Weiss, (765) 494-6061, weiss@psych.purdue.edu
Stephen Matthews, (765) 446-5399
Terry Wilson, (765) 423-6361