The Multimodal Whole Animal Imaging Core (MWAIC) proceeded with procurement of Equipment in Year 4 to facilitate the general aim of providing a cutting edge multimodal animal imaging facility dedicated to the functional and structural imaging of infectious diseases to support NEIDL research. MWAIC¿s activities are centered on development of standard procedures, preparation of instrumentation for simulations and initial experiments as well as training of personnel in BSL-4 and BSL-3 procedures. 1) Installation and testing of imaging instrumentation 2) Set up and testing of ancillary equipment. 3) Train personnel for BSL-4 procedures. 4) Refine SOPs and operating manuals

The Whole Animal Imaging Core (MWAIC) will establish and maintain a state of the art magnetic resonance imaging facility under BSL-4 containment in which whole animals (control and infected with category A, B and C agents) can be examined by NEIDL investigators. The facility is planned to take advantage of anticipated innovations in molecular and multimodal imaging, ranging from paramagnetic contrast agents for small animal MRI to rule based image fusion and multidimensional statistics for multimodal imaging. It is clear that multimodal and molecular imaging of whole animals in a BSL-4 environment is an evolving field. In fact, MWAIC is poised to both define and advance this new emerging area of scientific endeavor. In addition, MWAIC plans to create and standardize acquisition and analyses processes for multimodal imaging in a BSL-4 environment, thus facilitating the cross-institutional reproducibility of experimental procedures.