CREF collaborates with the Santa Lucia Foundation IRCCS (FSL) through a joint and equal research platform located at the Foundation. FSL is a Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization, and Healthcare, offering highly specialized clinical activities for treating neurological diseases and neurorehabilitation after trauma or brain injuries. The Santa Lucia Foundation handles over 2,000 hospitalizations per year (in addition to outpatient activities) and is home to intensive research.

The joint research platform is dedicated to basic and clinical research in neuroscience and neuroimaging. Its goal is to develop, refine, and apply new Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technologies. Within the platform’s activities, CREF and FSL researchers work in close contact with clinical teams to maximize the research’s translational value.

CREF has a dedicated lab called NaN (Neurophysics and Neuroimaging) within the platform. Furthermore, the neuroimaging research activities for the entire platform are coordinated by CREF staff. These activities involve many researchers (about 50, from various public and private institutions) and can rely on cutting-edge experimental infrastructure. A Siemens Prisma 3T MRI scanner is available and exclusively dedicated to research. The highest-performance scanner currently available features 64 RF channels, 80 mT/m @ 200 T/m/s gradients, and a highly homogeneous magnet. Advanced, non-commercial MRI sequences are available through research agreements with major international institutions (Harvard Medical School, University of Minneapolis, University of California San Diego). Tools for programming pulse sequences and the required expertise and certifications are available.

Finally, the platform has all the auxiliary tools necessary for monitoring volunteers and conducting complex functional studies. It also has a complete IT infrastructure. This includes distributed processing (grid-based computing optimized for neuroimaging, with over 140 nodes) and a comprehensive database for neuroimaging data integrated with central storage on a 200 TB online SAN RAID, of which about 10% is on SSD. The database currently contains neuroimages from approximately 14,000 patients.