Specialty	Radiology
Gender	Male
E-mail	cheuk.tang@mssm.edu
Education and Training	PHD, University of California, Irvine

Departments of Radiology and Psychiatry

Director, Neurovascular Imaging Research
Associate Director, Imaging Science Laboratories
Director, In-Vivo Molecular Imaging SRF

Cheuk Y. Tang, Ph.D., received his Ph.D. in 1999 from the University of California at Irvine under the supervision of Dr. Zang Hee Cho, a pioneer in PET and MRI. Dr. Tang has been involved with medical imaging since he finished his undergraduate studies in Physics, Mathematics and Computer science. In the early stages of his career he was involved with image processing of PET and MRI imaging modalities. His interests involved edge detection and tissue classification. He developed a complete image processing software system including a fully automated edge detection expert software system for PET scans for the UCI Brain Imaging Center. Dr. Tang was the Director of Scientific Computing at the UCI Brain Imaging Center from 1988 through 1996. During his graduate studies Dr. Tang studied the physics and engineering of PET, Cyclotrons and MRI systems. He was the chief engineer for Irvine Imaging International Inc., and was responsible for the design, simulation and construction of a prototype mini-PET camera. Later in his graduate career he focused on MRI physics where he studied fast imaging using various modulation schemes of the DANTE sequence and diffusion imaging. His Ph.D. dissertation was on the diffusion tensor technique and functional MRI. Dr. Tang joined the faculty at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York in 1999 where he is currently Assistant Professor of Radiology and Psychiatry. Dr. Tang been awarded a seed grand from the RSNA to study brain plasticity during stroke recovery using fMRI and Difusion Tensor Imaging. He also received a Howard Hughes Imaging Grant to image high resolution micro-MRI for a brain atlas of the common wild-type as well as a variety of transgenic mice.

Education and Training	PHD, University of California, Irvine

Specialty	Radiology

Dr. Tang is currently working on diagnostic technologies for Alzheimer's Disease and related research. There are currently no definative diagnostic techniques for AD. The neuropathological hallmark of AD are neuritic plaques and neurofibrillary tangles that can only be detected using histochemical staining techniques. Trangenic Mouse models have been developed that overexpress beta-amyloid plaques. Dr. Tang use both single transgenic (APPswe) which develop plaque deposits in both cortical and hippocampal areas at the age of 12 months and double transgenic (APP/PS1) which develop robust plaques at 6 months of age. Current research in treatment strategies can roughly be divided into methods that clear existing plaque deposits, methods that prevent the buildup of plaques and techniques that compensate for the neuronal deaths dues to the plaques. The former two require the quantification of plaque burden. The current gold standard using histological stains does not allow for longitudinal monitoring of plaque burden in-vivo, which is important if one want to study the efficacy of any treatment protocol. Conventional histological techniques are also time consuming and too costly to apply to the whole brain. Dr. Tang is developing MRI based technologies to visualize these beta-amyloid plaques for both ex-vivo and in-vivo applications.

For ex-vivo application Dr. Tang has developed a Micro MRI protocol which allows one to obtain isotropic resolutions down to 20 mm. These voxels are several orders of magnitude smaller (1:100,000) than conventional clincal MRI. Whole brain data with up to 512 images can be obtained in one scan and we have been able to observe plaque lesions at these resolutions. Additional advantages of using this approach is that the data is inherently in a digital format readily available for subsequent computerized quantification. In addition, a high resolution structural dataset is obtained for volumetric analysis.


Beta-amyloid plaques visualized as hypointense lesions in single transgenic mice (APPswe) at 25 micron resolution.


Double Transgenic (APP/PS1) at 20 micron resolution.


High-resolution 3D whole brain dataset (wild type).

For in-vivo applications Dr. Tang is researching ligands that can be used in conjunction with MRI contrast agents. These ligands (peptides) attach themselves to the beta-amyloid plaques when administered into the vascular system. When we bind MR contrast agents (e.g. Gadolinium Gd or Monocrystaline Iron Oxide Nanoparticles MION) to these peptides they stick to the plaque lesions and return an MRI detectable signal. The challenge here is the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB) which is a semi-permeable fence between the brain and the vascular system that prevents most large foreign molecules from entering the brain. This problem is targeted by using both osmotic agents as well as receptor mediated techniques. The development of this technology not only allows longitudinal monitoring of treatment strategies in animal models but are portable to human applications such as diagnosis and monitoring.

In addition, Dr. Tang collaborates with other researchers to apply these molecular imaging technologies for the development of novel diagnostic imaging modalities for other diseases such as autism, Niema nn Pick's disease, Parkinson and prion diseases.


Dr. Tang is an investigator of the CONTE center team which aims to study the role of white matter disruptions in schizophrenia. These projects involved both human and mice models of the disease. Human imaging involves structural MRI, DTI, fMRI and MRSi on a 3T MRI. Mouse models include MAG, Quaking, NRG1 etc imaged using DTI in a 9.4T MRI.

Dr. Tang is also intensively involved with developing novel image analysis techniques for the use with Diffusion Tensor Imaging and functional MRI. His team has developed several software packages that integrate DTI with fMRI for the quantification of functional and structural connectivity. In addition to DTI fiber tracking, software for automated extraction of resting state brain networks have been developed. These techniques have been applied to disorders such as schizophrenia, brain lesions due to exposure to solvents, normal cognitive brain function correlates.

Friedman JI, Tang C, Carpenter D, Buchsbaum M, Schmeidler J, Flanagan L, Golembo S, Kanellopoulou I, Ng J, Hof PR, Harvey PD, Tsopelas ND, Stewart D, Davis KL. Diffusion Tensor Imaging Findings in First-Episode and Chronic Schizophrenia Patients. Am J Psychiatry 2008; 165: 1024-1032.

Carpenter D, Tang CY, Friedman JL, Hof PR, Stewart DG, Buchsbaum MS, Harvey PD, Gorman JM, Davis KL. Temporal Characteristics of Tract-Specific Anisotropy Abnormalities in Schizophrenia. Neuroreport 2008;.

Friedman JI, Carpenter D, Lu J, Fan J, Tang CY, White L, Parrella M, Bowler S, Elbaz Z, Flanagan L, Harvey PD. A pilot study of adjunctive atomoxetine treatment to second-generation antipsychotics for cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. J Clin Psychopharmacol 2008; 28(1): 59-63.

Tang CY, Friedman J, Shungu D, Chang L, Ernst T, Steward D, Carpenter D, Ng J, Hajianpour A, Mao X, Hof P, Buchsbaum MS, Davis K, Gorman JM. Correlations between Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (1H MRS) in schizophrenic patients and normal controls. BMC Psychiatry 2007 Jun 19; 7: 25.

Buchsbaum MS, Tang CY, Peled S, Gudbjartsson H, Lu D, Hazlett EA, Downhill J, Haznedar M, Fallon JH, Atlas SW, . MRI white matter diffusion anisotropy and PET metabolic rate in Schizophrenia. NeuroReport 1998; 9: 425-430.

Wadghiri YZ, Sigurdsson EM, Sadowski M, Elliot JI, Li Y, Scholtzova H, Tang CY, Aguinaldo G, Pappolla M, Duff K, Wisniewski T, Turnbull DH, . Detection of Alzheimer's Amyloid in Transgenic Mice using Magnetic Resonance Micro-Imaging. Magn Reson Med 2003 Aug; 50(2): 293-302.

Sadowski M, Tang CY, Aguinaldo G, Carp R, Meeker HC, Wisniewski T. In vivo micro magnetic resonance imaging signal changes in scrapie infected mice. Neuroscience Letters 2003; 345: 1-4.