Members

Dr. Dunn is the Director of the Experimental Imaging Centre (University of Calgary), which develops and applies technology to study disease models as well as translate technology to patient care. He has developed MRI and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) methods to non-invasively study brain oxygenation and blood vessel growth in brain in response to chronic low oxygen—such as may occur in stroke, MS and high altitude medicine and brain injury. Animal models include stroke, epilepsy, cancer, MS and brain injury. Brain oxygen levels are a sensitive marker of brain health. He has developed a NIRS functional brain imaging protocol and has detected changes in brain activity in people with long term symptoms after concussion. With his team he is refining and validating NIRS protocols to determine if the results are predictive of outcome or severity. This work is aimed at developing non-invasive near-infrared technology for the clinic for assessing mTBI. He and his team may have found a method that is portable and relatively inexpensive to monitor brain injury.