Albert became interested in xenon and MR while still in graduate school. “I ended up going to graduate school for chemistry and, because I wanted to work on a new imaging modality for the brain, I majored in physical chemistry,” he told the publication.

He then joined a nuclear magnetic resonance group at the State University of New York at Stony Brook that was involved with MR. “For one of my projects, I began researching xenon. This led me to postulate that using xenon to study the brain could simplify the imaging process, as it doesn’t form bonds with other elements and alleviates complications.”


Now, thanks to the funding for his work at Weston, he is able to pursue the research that began decades ago.

“I collaborated with Professor Gordon Cates and his research group at Princeton University,” he recounted in his 2014 interview. “We used an optical pumping system to inflate mouse lungs with hyperpolarized (HP) xenon, and published our findings in Nature in 1994. This was the first demonstration of HP gas imaging of any kind. We chose to image the lungs because that’s where the signal would be highest after inhaling the gas. We then had the idea to move onto the brain – my main interest at the time. Now, however, 20 years later, we are just beginning to image the brain.”

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