About Us

Our Mission

The Human Imaging Research Office's mission is to facilitate University of Chicago investigators conducting clinical trials and research studies that require medical imaging and to ensure that the necessary imaging is performed and distributed in compliance with the research protocol, IRB requirements, and HIPAA regulations.

The Human Imaging Research Office, or HIRO (pronounced "hero"), was created in early 2009 as an initiative of the Biological Science Division's Imaging Research Institute. The IRI intended the HIRO to be the facilitator, or "neutral intermediary," for clinical trials and research protocols that require the use of medical imaging or radiology resources. In this regard, the HIRO's goal is to standardize the process for utilizing these resources for research purposes and to make this process more efficient and accurate. To learn more about the history of the HIRO, including why it was created, please click here.

Our Office

The HIRO has three principal responsibilities, each of which defines the primary function of a separate operational team: (1) coordinating the acquisition of imaging data for clinical trials and research studies in a manner consistent with the research protocol, (2) providing assessment and measurement of disease response for clinical trials in a consistent and coherent manner, and (3) managing and distributing clinical image data for research studies in an IRB- and HIPAA-compliant manner.

Our Teams

  • The Image Acquisition Team is responsible for coordinating any issues related to the planning and execution of research-related human imaging. This includes protocol preparation and review with the principal investigator and their team, imaging protocol coordination with clinical and research radiology staff, scan scheduling and billing coordination, resource and data management, and quality assurance.

  • The Image Measurement and Analysis Team is responsible for providing investigators with specialized image measurement data in a consistent and efficient manner. This includes ensuring that measurements are made in accordance with the study protocol's specific requirements (e.g., volumetric measurements, experimental 2-D measurements, etc.), providing consistent measurements for follow-up scans, and ensuring that required measurement data is completed and delivered in a timely fashion.

  • The Image Collection and Database Team is responsible for providing researchers with de-identified (or "anonymized") patient information and medical images for use in biomedical research. The image collection team interacts with the acquisition team as well to provide support and data delivery services for prospective clinical trials, and it is involved with several data mining projects with the Radiology Informatics team. This team also provides medical images and related data to the Center for Research Informatics's CRDW Team in support of data requests when needed.

HIRO Organizational Chart (Rev 2014-02-12)

Contact Us

If you require any assistance or have any questions regarding the use of medical imaging for any type of research, please contact the HIRO at hirohelp [at] bsd [dot] uchicago [dot] edu

For additional contact information and information about the HIRO, please see the following pages: