Grant: Operating Grant: COVID-19 Rapid Research Funding Opportunity - Diagnostics

The novel coronavirus has devastated the world since its initial outbreak in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Many individuals with this illness suffer from severe respiratory disease however there is growing evidence that this virus also affects other organs. Many patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have evidence for heart damage during their infection and/or they have reported decreased taste and smell. We have developed new techniques in MRI to image the heart, lung, brain and liver. We are proposing to perform MRI scans on patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in order to better understand the injury to the lung and other organs. We will scan patients within the first 2 days of their hospital stay, at discharge and then 3 months after they are discharged. These three time points will also provide information on recovery from illness, an area which is also not well understood and poorly studied. We hope that this research will better identify patients at long-term risk of health issues from COVID-19. This MRI approach could also be used in future studies to evaluate the effects of new treatments on the lungs and other organs.