Yvonne W. Lui, MD

My research focus is on traumatic brain injury, with the ultimate goal of improving injury detection, patient outcomes, and treatment development. I lead a multidisciplinary translational research team that includes physicists, neuropsychologists, and clinical collaborators from the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine, the Department of Neurology, and Rusk Rehabilitation, as well as computer scientists from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

I serve as principal investigator on multiple projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). These include an R01 grant to study levels of brain iron after traumatic brain injury and an R21 grant to study the use of computational techniques to stratify patients with traumatic brain injury.

I investigate how to apply the latest MRI technology to brain injury in the following areas:

• understanding cellular-level tissue microstructure using intravoxel modeling of diffusion and transverse relaxation
• unveiling the metabolic mechanisms of disease using proton spectroscopy, sodium MRI, and blood-oxygen-level–dependent (BOLD) functional MRI
• applying advanced machine learning methods to study multimodal MRI for patient classification and outcome prediction

I am committed to developing collaborative imaging science across disciplines here at NYU Langone. I lead the imaging component on two Department of Neurology projects. One is a highly publicized study of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in retired National Football League players, funded by a U01 grant from the NIH. The other is a study examining subconcussive impacts in athletes, funded by the New York State Department of Health.

I am a founding member of the NYU Langone Concussion Center; I am also a member of its steering committee and co-chair of the research subcommittee. I work with the Department of Psychiatry investigating biomarkers that differentiate post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.