Alejandro Diaz Lab - Applied Chest Imaging Laboratory (ACIL)
Call: 617-732-5188
Email: adiaz6@bwh.harvard.edu
Overview
Dr. Diaz’ research group in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital within the Applied Chest Imaging Laboratory (ACIL) integrates clinical medicine with quantitative imaging and data science to better understand complex lung diseases, particularly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchiectasis. Their research applied visual and engineering-based methodologies to computed tomography scans from large, well-characterized cohorts—such as COPDGene, ECLIPSE (Evaluation of COPD Longitudinally to Identify Predictive Surrogate Endpoints), DECAMP (Detection of Early Lung Cancer in Active Military Personnel Study), FHS (Framingham Heart Study), and CARDIA (Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults)— to investigate imaging biomarkers, pathologic features, health outcomes, and other disease aspects.
Mucus plug gene expression could identify new COPD targets
Mucus plugs persisting across 5 years linked to larger FEV1 decreases in COPD
This lung disease can be dangerous for younger people, too
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Suspected bronchiectasis in people who smoke
In this episode of Annals On Call, Dr. Centor discusses suspected bronchiectasis and mortality in people who smoke with and without normal lung function with Dr. Alejandro Diaz.
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Alejandro Diaz, MD, MPH
Brigham and Women's Hospital
adiaz6@bwh.harvard.edu
Physician-scientist whose research focuses on the application of advanced imaging and computational methods to understand the structural and functional basis of chronic lung diseases, with the goal of improving diagnosis, phenotyping, and clinical outcomes.
Wei Wang, PhD
Biostatistician, Brigham and Women's Hospital
wwang4@bwh.harvard.edu
Dr. Wang has a strong background in many areas of biostatistics, with specific training in experimental design, clinical trials, cohort studies and performing time series, longitudinal data, and survival analyses.
Sofia Mettler, MD, MPH, MSc
Fellow, Brigham and Women's Hospital
smettler@bwh.harvard.edu
Ruchita Borgaonkar, MPH
Bioinformatician I, Brigham and Women's Hospital
ruchitaborgaonkar@bwh.harvard.edu
Ruchita’s research focuses on pulmonary imaging biomarkers, including mucus plugs and bronchiectasis, and their associations with lung health outcomes. Her work includes visual and quantitative assessment of CT scans for imaging biomarkers, data management, statistical analyses, and manuscript preparation for observational and longitudinal clinical research studies.