The Vanderbilt Gastrointestinal SQUID Technology (GIST) Laboratory is an interdisciplinary initiative by the Department of General Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and by the Departments of Physics and Astronomy and of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. The purpose of the GIST Lab is to investigate GI disease through the noninvasive use of Superconducting QUantum Interference Device (SQUID) Magnetometer and high density Electrogastrogram (EGG). A SQUID magnetometer is a highly sensitive device that has the ability to measure the weak magnetic fields of the human GI system without contact to the human body.
The goal of the research in our lab is to develop novel noninvasive methods for the diagnosis of various diseases that are very difficult to detect otherwise, such as pediatric chronic nausea, gastroparesis and intestinal ischemia. Since the early 1990s, the GI SQUID research group at Vanderbilt University has pioneered the use of SQUIDs for this purpose and has obtained numerous results in the field of noninvasive GI diagnosis. Our laboratory has been funded by the National Institute of Health for over 15 years. Please feel free to browse through our pages and contact us for further details.