Group Resources

FACILITIES:

Our facilities are extensive, and include all the imaging resources of the department of radiology at UCSF including tools for phantom construction and electronics fabrication. Dr Shepherd has 800 sq. feet of laboratory space provided by the Department of Radiology that includes 300 sq. ft. research laboratory, a 120 sq. ft. workstation room and 80 sq ft. resource room all located at within the UCSF China Basin Laboratory, 185 Berry Street.

Research Laboratory: 

The research laboratory contains an electronics workbench for fabricating electronics that includes oscilloscopes, voltmeters, and workstations configured to supply control signals to experimental devices. The laboratory also contains a physical fabrication area for construction of phantoms and parts that includes a milling machine, drill press, a band saw, and an extensive assortment of hand and power tools.

The laboratory contains x-ray and ultrasound devices for experiments in measuring tissue density including the following devices: Sunlight Omnisense 7000 ultrasonometer, GE/Lunar PIXI/mus, Stratec XTC-960 peripheral QCT device, Osteometer DTX-200 peripheral DXA device. The research laboratory will be used to develop the image processing tools and construct prototype phantoms.

China Basin Facility: 

At our China Basin facility, we have a GE Healthcare Prodigy bone densitometer and a Hologic Delphi/A at our Ambulatory Care Center. Through the UCSF Mt. Zion Cancer Center, we have access to over 5 dedicated film mammography devices including 4 film Hologic Lo-Rad M-4 and GE DMR machines, as well as a Fischer Direct Digital and a GE DMR 2000 Digital Mammography machine (to be installed in the Spring 2005).

CLINICAL:

MAMMOGRAPHY: Dr. Shepherd has clinical space in the UCSF China Basin Imaging Center that includes a Hologic Selenia Digital Mammography System dedicated for research. The Radiology Department at Mt.Zion is a full service clinical mammography program with over 5 film mammography systems, 4 film-based Hologic Lo-Rad M-4 and 1 GE DMR system. Two Hologic Selenia FFDM systems have been ordered and will replace two of the film screening units in December, 2006. We will use the Mt. Zion facility for our in vivo studies and the China Basin system for phantom and protocol development.

MRI: All breast MRI research studies are conducted at the Magnetic Resonance Science Center (MRSC), Department of Radiology on the Parnassus campus of UCSF.  A patient waiting room and changing area, and reception area are all part of the MRSC facility. Computer:

Dr. Shepherd maintains approximately 3 PC workstations, and 3 file servers including a SNAP file server for PC, Mac, and UNIX filetypes. He also has a dedicated mammography film digitization setup consisting of 3 Vidar Diagnostic Plus film digitizers and 2 workstations with bar code readers that can digitize up to 1000 films a day. In addition, he has licenses for Matlab analysis software, FEMlab finite element software, and SAS statistical software, Microsoft VC++, Mathematica, and other useful computational programs.