Kenneth Kwong is an Associate Professor in radiology at Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....

. His work, along with that of Seiji Ogawa

Seiji Ogawa

Seiji Ogawa is a Japanese researcher best known for discovering the technique that underlies Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging . He determined that the contrast in blood oxygen levels can be mapped in magnetic resonance imaging, thus showing which areas of the brain respond to the brain's...

, was significant in the development of fMRI.

On May 9, 1991, working at the Massachusetts General Hospital, he succeeded in imaging the changing magnetic resonance

Magnetic resonance

Magnetic resonance can mean:*Nuclear magnetic resonance*Electron spin resonance*Magnetic resonance imaging *Functional magnetic resonance imaging *Muon spin spectroscopy...

 (MR) signal at the visual cortex

Visual cortex

The visual cortex of the brain is the part of the cerebral cortex responsible for processing visual information. It is located in the occipital lobe, in the back of the brain....

 in response to flickering visual stimuli, using MR echo-planar imaging

Imaging

Imaging is the representation or reproduction of an object's outward form; especially a visual representation .- Imaging methodologies and technologies :...

 technology to acquire images of T2* weighted BOLD contrast. In August of the same year, Dr. Thomas Brady presented Dr. Kwong's real time movie of the evolution of the brain

Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...

 activation

Activation

Activation in chemical sciences generally refers to the process whereby something is prepared or excited for a subsequent reaction.- Chemistry :...

at a plenary lecture at the Society of Magnetic Resonance Conference in San Francisco.

In 1992 Kwong and coauthors published one of the three papers showing that brain activation could be mapped using BOLD.