OAK BROOK, Ill. (July 10, 2013) – The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Research and Education (R&E) Foundation will fund 85 grants totaling more than $3 million in 2013, the largest amount ever awarded by the Foundation in a single year.

“On behalf of the R&E Foundation Board of Trustees, I would like express our sincerest gratitude and appreciation to our donor partners whose contributions make funding these innovative awards possible,” said James P. Borgstede, M.D., R&E Foundation chair.

Grants provided by the R&E Foundation serve as seed grants to launch careers and provide a pathway to subsequent funding from additional sources including National Institutes of Health, corporations and private foundations. Since its inception in 1984, the R&E Foundation has awarded more than $40 million in grants to nearly 1,000 investigators and educators, enabling more than $1 billion in radiological research.

Grant recipients hail from 40 different institutions across the United States and Canada and will perform innovative research on a wide spectrum of projects spanning different modalities and anatomic areas including PET/CT image-guided stereotactic ablative radiotherapy in prostate cancer and multimodal MRI to detect brain injury in athletes.

Awards for educational initiatives, aimed at improving teaching and training skills, include curriculum development for hybrid molecular imaging and evidence-based clinical practice, as well as the development of a high-fidelity simulated environment for assessment of radiology residents prior to independent call.

Grant funding is made possible by the support of thousands of individuals, private practices and corporations that share in the R&E Foundation’s mission to improve patient care through the advancement of radiologic research, education and practice.