As Director of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital, he has overseen significant advances including the introduction and development of functional MRI in the early 1990s.
Using an MR technique he had developed to track blood flow ("dynamic susceptibility contrast") he imaged the visual cortex of volunteers during periods of both rest and activation.
[1] The study opened the door to functional imaging the brain with MRI, but because the approach required the use of an intravenous contrast agent it was not suitable for wide application in humans.
To address this limitation, Kenneth Kwong, a postdoctoral fellow in the NMR Center, developed a means to measure endogenous signals based on blood oxygenation using gradient echo imaging.
He is a Fellow of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and an ISMRM Gold Medal winner for his contributions to the field of Functional MRI.