imaginostics

Tackling unmet clinical needs in non-invasive quantitative diagnostics

About Imaginostics

Imaginostics is a health tech startup developing a breakthrough longevity technology for precision medicine located in Lake Nona Medical City, Orlando, FL. The company’s QUTE-CE MRI methodology provides vascular imaging biomarkers that can non-invasively assay vascular structure and function in high resolution anywhere in the body, providing clinicians and scientists new endpoints for early detection and enhanced characterization of complex diseases.

Addressing the need for quantitative imaging biomarkers

There is a dearth of non-invasive diagnostic tools for the internal assessment of our body’s physiology. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the safest, most non-invasive clinical imaging modalities, however it primarily provides clinicians with only qualitative, contrast-based images. No matter how much processing goes into it, even with artificial intelligence (AI), we will always be limited by the qualitative nature of the current imaging biomarkers. Until now, the few quantitative biomarkers for MRI are not reliable for single patient precision diagnostics, and there is a desperate need for reliable and accurate measurements of relevant internal physiology.


Dr. Codi Gharagouzloo is an MRI Physicist that has been inventing and developing Imaginostics' proprietary MRI-based quantitative vascular imaging technology since 2011, running preclinical and clinical studies. Together with his wife, Valerie, they created Imaginostics to translate this technology from bench-top to bedside.

TEAM

Codi Amir Gharagouzloo, MSc, PhD

Scientific Founder & CEO

Codi developed the technology as a Postdoctoral Fellow for two years at the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School before founding the company to translate the technology from bench to bedside. He invented the imaging modality while pursuing his PhD in Bio-Engineering and has an extensive background in imaging and engineering, holding a Master’s of Science degree in BioPhotonics and dual Bachelor degrees in Mechanical & Nuclear Engineering and Physics. He enjoys bike riding, the gym, and playing board games with his family. If given another lifespan, he would go on a space exploration adventure like Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek.

Valerie Aimee Gharagouzloo, Esq

Co-Founder & COO

Valerie is a New York attorney. Her background is in International Human Rights Law and U.S. Immigration Law. She is an advocate for affordable medical care for all. Valerie’s youngest brother grew up with only one kidney and a rare uncurable disease of the peripheral nervous system, with unknown cause and symptoms similar to diabetic neuropathy. Valerie and Codi have been married for 13 years and have two beautiful children. In her role as COO, Valerie is outreaching to our first pharma clients to offer our services for accelerating drug development – especially for novel drugs that improve vascular biology. She is also reaching out to potential investors and partners to bring our breakthrough longevity technology to market.

Mike Lawson

CBDO & Founding Investor

Our founding angel investor and Chief Business Development Officer, Mike brings a wealth of experience to Imaginostics. His multifaceted background in business development spans sales and marketing, managerial finance, process management, and investor relations. Beyond his role at Imaginostics, Mike is a dynamic force in the venture capital landscape, founding and managing two ad-hoc venture capital groups. His expertise extends to serving as an investor and advisor to several early-stage companies, showcasing a commitment to fostering innovation and growth within the broader tech and biotech startup community.

Chenguang Zhao, PhD

Senior MRI Physicist

Chenguang earned his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2005. Subsequently, he pursued postdoctoral projects in fMRI, MRS, and MRI under the supervision of Professors Hangzhang Lu, Changho Choi, and Stefan Posse. In 2011, he joined Philips Healthcare (Suzhou), where he led a team on pulse programming, reconstruction, and system integration. Chenguang joined Imaginostics in May 2023 as a Senior MRI physicist. He is highly enthusiastic about delivering cutting-edge medical imaging solutions and dependable imaging biomarkers to medical providers. Together with his colleagues, Chenguang strives to make advanced MRI technologies more accessible and affordable for medical professionals and patients in health screening, diagnosis, and monitoring. In the future, Chenguang would like to build a metaverse simulating the real world, including virtual MRIs.

W. Scott Hoge, PhD

Senior MRI Physicist

Scott earned his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University. He served as an MRI physicist at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) for nearly two decades and is an expert in pulse sequence programming, image reconstruction and advanced signal processing and imaging analysis techniques. Scott has a love of art, an affinity for mathematics and technology, and found both in MRI. He is also mission-driven with a desire to understand and improve the human condition.

Joshua Leaston, BS

Neuroimaging Engineer

Josh is an MD/PhD candidate at Stanford University. He holds a BS in Neuroscience from Northeastern University. Josh worked 2.5 years at Imaginostics full-time developing neuroimaging data processing pipelines and publishing results, now he works part-time on analysis. He has 3 years of hands-on experience working on Bruker 7T preclinical scanners, with expertise in awake imaging obtained from the Center for Translational Neuroimaging (CTNI). 

Kayvan R. Keshari, PhD

Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Keshari is a Member, Professor and Laboratory Head at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His lab explores the development of imaging strategies to better understand metabolism and leverage those approaches to develop novel therapeutics.

Kevin Johnson, PhD

Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Johnson is the inventor of Imaginostics' proprietary 3D UTE pulse sequence. He assists in development of robust imaging software suite for the company with wide-ranging applications. Dr. Johnson's expertise in MRI physics includes Non-Cartesian sampling for motion encoded pulse sequences, ultra-short echo time lung imaging,  and quantitative angiographic imaging. Dr. Johnson is the technical lead for research MRI methods that have been has been used on thousands of subjects, including use in more than fifteen external sites in the US and around the globe, and he is currently Assistant Professor of Medical Physics and Radiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Peder Larson, one of the board advisors of Imaginostics

Peder EZ Larson, PhD

Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Larson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at UCSF and a leading expert 3D UTE MRI techniques. He has been developing UTE sequences on GE scanners for over 15 years at 1.5T, 3T, 7T, and on PET/MRI scanners, and he is an expert in image acceleration and advanced image reconstruction techniques. His work includes quantitative applications throughout the body, including brain, lung, cortical bone, tendons, and kidneys imaging.