Research Faculty

P. Ellen Grant, MD

Department       Neworn Medicine and Radiology
Hospital Title Founding Director, Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center
Academic Title Associate Professor of Radiology, HMS
Phone 857-218-5111
Fax 617-730-4671
Email P. Ellen Grant
Location 1 Autumn Street                                           Boston MA 02115

 

Research Overview

Dr. Grant is the Director of the Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center (FNNDSC) at Children's Hospital Boston. The center's purpose is to create the infrastructure and provide the expertise needed to support and foster cutting edge clinical and translational science research involving magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) across multiple subspecialties.

The center's work addresses critical needs in the pediatric population:

  • Children are different than adults: Children's brains go through dramatic changes in size and composition, with associated physiological changes. Children need technology developed for the unique size and physiology of their brains.
  • Children's brains are not fully "online": It is impossible, for example, to test an infant's language function, so it is important to develop imaging approaches that permit clinicians to evaluate the structures and the physiological health of regions that will promote developing functions. This will allow clinicians to better predict function in individual children.
  • Children's brains are much more plastic than adult brains: To optimize the potential of each individual child, safe methods are needed to monitor brain growth and development as well as response to therapy. The multiple modalities employed by the center are safe and provide the most sophisticated means of monitoring brain heath.
  • The development of a child's brain is an extremely complex process: A multidisciplinary center, where clinicians and scientists can come together and work with a common set of tools, is necessary to improve knowledge of brain development.

 

About P. Ellen Grant, MD

Dr. Grant holds a Master of Science degree in physics and an MD from the University of Toronto. She did her radiology residency at Vancouver General Hospital in British Columbia, Canada, and her fellowship in adult and pediatric neuroradiology at the University of California, San Francisco. She is now an associate professor of radiology at the Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Grant headed the Division of Pediatric Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital for five years before moving to Children's Hospital Boston to become the founding director of the Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center and the first incumbent of Children's Hospital Boston Chair in Neonatology. At Children's she holds appointments in the Division of Newborn Medicine and the Department of Radiology.

Dr. Grant is a co-author of two popular textbooks for clinical neuroradiology and has won a number of awards for her research efforts as well as recognition for her clinical excellence.

 

Key Publications

  • Hagmann P, Sporns O, Madan N, Cammoun L, Pienaar R, Wedeen VJ, Meuli R, Thiran J-P, Grant PE. White Matter Maturation Reshapes Structural Connectivity in the Late Developing Human Brain. (Accepted to PNAS.)
  • Takahashi E, Dai G, Rosen GD, Wang R, Ohki K, Folkerth RD, Galaburda AM, Wedeen VJ, Grant PE. Developing Neocortex Organization and Connectivity in Cats Revealed by Direct Correlation of Diffusion Tractography and Histology. Cereb Cortex. 2010 May 21. PMID: 20494968.
  • Vishwas MS, Chitnis T, Pienaar R, Healy BC, Grant PE. Tract-based analysis of callosal, projection, and association pathways in pediatric patients with multiple sclerosis: a preliminary study. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 2010 Jan; 31(1):121-8. Epub 2009 Oct 22.
  • Madan N, Grant PE. New Directions in Clinical Imaging of Cortical Dysplasias. Epilepsia 2009 Oct; 50 Suppl 9:9-18. PMID: 19761449.
  • Grant PE, Roche-Labarbe N, Surova N, Themelis G, Selb J, Warren EK, Krishnamoorthy KS, Boas DA, Franceschini MA. Increased cerebral blood volume and oxygen consumption in neonatal brain injury. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2009 Oct;29(10):1704-13. Epub 2009 Jul 15. PMID: 19675563. PMCID: PMC2762197.
  • Pienaar R, Fischl B, Caviness V, Makris N, Grant PE. A Methodology for Analyzing Curvature in the Developing Brain from Preterm to Adult. Int J Imaging Syst Technol. 2008 Jun 1;18(1):42-68. PMID: 19936261. PMCID: PMC2779548.
  • Eichler F, Krishnamoorthy K, Grant PE. Magnetic resonance imaging evaluation of possible neonatal sinovenous thrombosis. Pediatr Neurol. 2007 Nov;37(5):317-23.
  • Franceschini MA, Thaker S, Themelis G, Krishnamoorthy KS, Bortfeld H, Diamond SG, Boas DA, Arvin K, Grant PE. Assessment of Infant Brain Development with Frequency-Domain Near-Infrared Spectroscopy. Pediatr Res. 2007 May;61(5 Pt 1):546-51. PMID: 17413855. PMCID: PMC2637818.
  • Nishida M, Makris N; Kennedy DN; Vangel M; Fischl B; Krishnamoorthy KS, Caviness VS, Grant PE: Detailed semiautomated MRI based morphometry of the neonatal brain: preliminary results. Neuroimage. 2006 Sep;32(3):1041-9. Epub 2006 Jul 20. PMID: 16857388.
  • Grant PE. Imaging the developing epileptic brain. Epilepsia. 2005;46 Suppl 7:7-14.
  • Ozsunar Y, Grant PE*, Huisman TAGM, et al. Evolution of Water Diffusion and Anisotropy in Hyperacute Stroke: Significant Correlation between Fractional Anisotropy and T2. AJNR Am J Neuoradiol. 2004;25(5):699-705. *co-first authors PMID: 15140707.
  • Ment LR, Bada HS, Barnes P, Grant PE, Hirtz D, Papile LA, Pinto-Martin J, Rivkin M, Slovis TL. Practice parameter: neuroimaging of the neonate: report of the Quality Standards Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology and the Practice Committee of the Child Neurology Society. Neurology. 2002 Jun 25;58(12):1726-38. PMID: 12084869.
  • Grant PE, He J, Halpern EF, et al. Frequency and clinical context of decreased apparent diffusion coefficient reversal in the human brain. Radiology. 2001 Oct;221(1):43-50. PMID: 11568319.
  • Barkovich AJ, Kuzniecky RI, Bollen AW, Grant PE. Focal transmantle dysplasia: a specific malformation of cortical development. Neurology. 1997 Oct;49:1148-52. PMID: 9339707.
  • Grant PE, Barkovich AJ, Wald L, et al. High Resolution Surface Coil Imaging of Cortical Lesions in Medically Refractory Epilepsy: A Prospective Study. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 1997 Feb;18(2):291-301. PMID: 9111666.

 

Focus of Research/Translational Research

Dr. Grant and her co-investigators are involved in several key technology-development projects for the pediatric population:

  • A small MR system for the hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). By bringing MRI, the superior tool for diagnosing brain injury, to the most vulnerable patient population, the newborns in the NICU, they hope to make MRI more accessible to this population in need. Dr. Grant, the Newborn Medicine Division, and the Radiology Department are working with a local MR manufacturer on this project.
  • Bedside NIRS equipment that--unlike commercial devices--will provide quantitative measures of cerebral blood volume, cerebral oxygen saturation, cerebral blood flow and cerebral oxygen consumption. Dr. Grant is working with the hospital's Division of Newborn Medicine and Maria Angela Franceschini of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biological Imaging.
  • A nearly $4 million project, funded by National Science Foundation, to design and build the first MEG system designed specifically for infants and young children. This system will have the technical capabilities needed for monitoring neural activity in young patients. (Current commercial devices are only available in adult sizes.)
  • Dr. Grant and the center's MEG Program director, Yoshio Okada, PhD, are working on this with the Neurology Department, the Radiology Department, and Matti S. Hamalainen, PhD, from the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biological Imaging.
  • MRI hardware tailored to the size of children, motion correction imaging sequences and appropriate counseling to minimize the need for sedation and anesthesia. Dr. Grant and the hospital's radiologists and child life experts are working on this project with physicists and engineers from the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biological Imaging.
  • High-performance computing capabilities and Web-based tools for clinicians and clinician-scientists to access innovative MRI post-processing tools. These have been developed By Dr. Grant, Rudolph Pienaar, D. Eng., the center's technical director, and Daniel Ginsburg, former principal software architect.
  • Other collaborators in the center include faculty and fellows from the Divisions of Newborn Medicine and Developmental Medicine as well as the Departments of Radiology, Neurology, Neurosurgery and Cardiology.

Full-time members of the center come from many disciplines including medicine, physics, neuroscience, engineering, mathematics, and computer science.