The McNab Lab is part of the Radiological Sciences Laboratory division of the Department of Radiology in the School of Medicine at Stanford University. We are based at the Richard M. Lucas Center for Imaging.

Our mission is to develop magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques that probe human brain tissue microstructure. This requires new MRI contrast mechanisms, strategic encoding and reconstruction schemes, physiological monitoring, brain tissue modeling and validation. Applications of these methods include neuronavigation, neurosurgical planning and the development of improved biomarkers for brain development, degeneration, disease and injury. 

Our current research is focused on the development of MRI pulse sequences and analysis strategies for:

  • Multi-dimensional Diffusion Encoding
  • Mapping Cortical Fiber Patterns
  • Integration of MRI and Advanced Histology
  • Mixed-Reality Neuronavigation for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
  • Diffusion Tractography for Neurosurgical Targeting

More details about our research >>

Lab News

03/09/2024: Jennifer is elected to the ISMRM Board of Trustees as the Scientist from Within North America. 

11/28/2023: Jennifer is elected to the Council of Distinguished Investigators by the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research. 

10/01/2023: Welcome Olivia Jones — visiting graduate student from Manchester University. 

10/01/2023: Congratulations to Erpeng Dai on his promotion to Instructor in the Department of Radiology, Stanford University. 

09/19/2023: Congratulations to Gustavo Chau, who was recently awarded a Siebel scholar grant.

09/15/2023: Welcome Yuxuan Wu, an incoming graduate student from BioE who will rotate in our lab this Fall.

09/01/2023: We welcome Sarah Kim to our group in the role of Clinical Coordinator.

09/01/2023: Congratulations to Erpeng Dai on his recently award NIH K99 grant entitled “Developing advanced diffusion MRI for early detection of Alzheimer’s Disease”. 

08/14/2023: Erpeng’s manuscript on frequency-dependent kurtosis imaging using the MAGNUS scanner is published in Neuroimage. 

08/11/2023: Gustavo’s manuscript on network-specific myelination changes in the progression of generalized epilepsy is now published  in Neuroimage. 

06/15/2023: Jennifer is awarded 5 more years of NIH R01 funding to develop imaging techniques that will help guide and interpret stereo-EEG procedures in epilepsy patients.

06/14/2023: Welcome Ethan Lee, who will be conducting research in our lab over the summer as a part of the RSL Research Experience for Undergraduates program.

05/30/2023: We’re hiring! Multiple postdoc positions available.

05/12/2023: Gustavo gives a presentation at the Neurosciences Preclinical Imaging Laboratory Symposium.

05/04/2023: Jennifer hosts Prof. Gwenaelle Douaud as the Neuroscience seminar speaker. 

04/28/2023: Gustavo is featured in a Stanford Neurosciences article.

03/22/2023: We welcome Jaqueline Velazquez as our new Administrative Assistant to our Lab!

03/16/2023: Erpeng Dai is selected as an ISMRM Junior Fellow for 2023.

03/08/2023: Jennifer is named Research Faculty of the Year in Stanford Radiology.

02/02/2023: Erpeng's abstract (Measuring time-dependent diffusion on a high-performance head-only gradient system at 3T: influence and correction of gradient nonlinearity) accepted as an oral presentation by ISMRM at the 2023 Annual Meeting.

02/02/2023: Gustavo's abstract (A transfer learning approach to predict Axon Diameter and g-ratio distributions from MRI Data) accepted as an oral presentation by ISMRM at the 2023 Annual Meeting.

01/25/2023: Together with Drs. Emmanuelle Weber, Ehsan Adeli and Nolan Williams, Jennifer is awarded a 2022 HAI Seed Grant from the Institute for Human-Centered Artifical Intelligence at Stanford.