Research is central to the St. Jude mission, and the Department of Radiology provides an exceptional environment for innovation in molecular imaging, theranostics, and translational science. The molecular imaging section has one NIH-funded PhD faculty member, with two additional faculty hires planned to advance radiopharmaceutical development and translational molecular imaging. Faculty benefit from direct access to departmental resources including the Molecular Imaging Core, the Radiology Data Center, and Image Quantification and Artificial Intelligence (IQAI) collaboratory. Dedicated staff assist with grant writing, IRB management, clinical research coordination, image processing, and biostatistics, ensuring seamless integration of research and clinical activity. Partnerships across Oncology, Surgery, Pathology, the Molecular Imaging Core, and Data Science create fertile ground for developing novel PET tracers, radiopharmaceuticals, and image-guided treatment paradigms. Faculty are encouraged and supported in pursuing extramural funding from the NIH, foundations, and industry partners, building upon strong institutional mentorship and infrastructure.
Artificial Intelligence:
The department is deeply engaged in advancing artificial intelligence (AI) and quantitative imaging to improve both patient care and research. Some clinician scientists are also members of Intelligent Imaging Informatics (I3), an expanding section that harnesses the power of imaging informatics and AI to accelerate research, clinical care, and translational efforts in pediatric radiology, advancing the St. Jude Mission. The Image Quantification and Artificial Intelligence (IQAI) Co-Laboratory is a dedicated research and development team for biomedical informatics and AI. This interdisciplinary team serves the Department of Radiology by building and maintaining the advanced data infrastructure that fuels faculty-led research, performing collaborative projects with clinicians and scientists and conducting core biomedical informatics research. The IQAI team recently developed a Radiology Data Center (RDC) for data science that supports de-identified radiologic and pathology data, electronic medical records, and other institutional datasets. These resources collectively position St. Jude as a leader in the ethical and impactful application of AI in pediatric imaging and provide a strong foundation for developing and validating AI-driven molecular imaging and theranostic tools.
Education is an important component of our mission. Faculty have the opportunity to teach and mentor radiology fellows, radiology residents, medical students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows. St. Jude supports professional development by providing travel funds for faculty presentations at national and international conferences. The department hosts an annual international educational conference and a separate scientific symposium, including dedicated courses for molecular imaging and therapeutics. In February 2026, St. Jude will co-host a Pediatric Oncologic Imaging Course with the Society for Pediatric Radiology (SPR), including a session for nuclear medicine. Faculty actively participate in institutional and national educational initiatives.