Policies

If you have any questions, please contact us at camri@unc.edu.

Scheduling/Cancellation Policies for 9.4T MRI

Standard operating hours for staff-operated studies are from 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Monday through Friday.
A minimum advance notice of 48 hours is required for staff-operated studies, which will be scheduled pending scanner and staff availability. It is best to schedule all staff-operated studies as far in advance as possible
24-hour advance notice is required for rescheduling or cancelling staff-operated studies. Full price for the scan will be charged if not given said notice.
All new staff-operated studies need to be requested through email or iLab (http://camri.org/service-core/ilab). All users need to submit a service request form through iLab for each study.
Scan charges are based on the time that is booked on iLab, including preparation and cleaning time. It is the responsibility of the user to check to make sure they are on the 9.4T calendar and to transport the animals to the scanning facility.
At times when the scanner schedule is unable to accommodate all users, we reserve the right to ask that each user schedule no more than 15 hours per week on the scanner.

Due to the high cost of the MRI equipment, extensive training is required for all PIs and their trainees that wish to conduct self-operated studies.
Our core offers a training course for a fee that covers MR safety and basic system operation only (for more information, contact camri@unc.edu).
After training, a core staff member needs to observe the user until the appropriate level of knowledge to run the scanner independently is demonstrated. The standard hourly staff fee will be applied.
Only advanced users, as deemed by the CAMRI Director, are allowed to scan during off hours (i.e., evenings and weekends).

The Core provides image acquisition services for established protocols only (please see http://camri.org/service-core/protocols for a list of imaging protocols).
For nonestablished protocols, the users are responsible for developing and managing imaging protocols and hardware that are not used for standard service.
Users are responsible for backing up their data.

The Core provides data analysis services using established protocols, including standard preprocessing (see http://camri.org/service-core/data-analysis/).
The Core is not responsible for developing new data analysis protocols at this time.
It is the user’s responsibility to provide guidance for the data analysis method, including specifying particular regions-of-interest (ROIs) for ROI-based analyses.
The Core can provide standard figures for publication. It is the user’s responsibility to provide guidance on the figure.
Once the user approves the analysis method and the analysis is underway, any modification (e.g., adding/changing ROIs, adding subjects, etc.) will be at an additional cost to the user.

The data will be backed up at the network storage (managed by department, scalable) on the day of acquisition by the operator (core staff).
To ensure data safety, biweekly, data will be backed up at the physical hard disk array (total 48 TB, RAID6), and the log is recorded into separate file on CAMRI SharePoint.
For system maintenance, data on the MRI scanner console will only be retained for about one year. Data older than 1 year can be deleted after backup is confirmed. An email notification of data removal will be sent one month before operation.
The Core does not back up the data for self-operating users.
At the user’s request, the data may be uploaded to Dropbox Business Cloud Drive, which will be shared for a fixed period (1 week-1 month) via the email of the requesting user for security.