Associate Professor

Maged Goubran

PhD, University of Western Ontario

Publications

Location

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Address

2075 Bayview Ave., Room M6 176, Toronto, Ontario Canada M4N 3M5

Research Interests

Biomedical Imaging, Data Science and Computational Biology, Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Image-Guided Therapy and Device Development, Neuroscience

Qualification

Postdoctoral fellow, Radiology / Neuroscience, Stanford University
Research scholar, Neurology, McGill University
PhD, Biomedical Engineering (Imaging), Western University

At a Glance

Computational neuroscience
Machine learning/artificial intelligence
Histopathology & tissue clearing
Brain networks & connectomics
Neuromodulation

Short Bio

Dr. Goubran is an associate professor of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute. He is a Canada Research Chair and an expert in computational neuroscience and AI. His research focuses on developing novel AI/computational and neuroimaging tools to understand and predict circuit dysfunction and model brain pathology in neurological and psychiatric disorders. His work has garnered several prestigious awards/honours from national and international institutions, including CIHR, NSERC, Stanford University, SfN, and ISMRM.

Research Synopsis

Our work combines technical and translational research. We specialize in developing AI models and computational pipelines for both the preclinical and clinical domains across multiple imaging modalities, including MRI and microscopy. Our lab’s core contributions are:

Mapping circuit dysfunction & modeling pathology
Our work focuses on developing novel computational tools to predict and understand circuit dysfunction and model brain pathology in neurological & psychiatric disorders. Our group previously elucidated and modeled circuit alterations in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) in both human and animal models.

Advanced multimodal neuroimage analyses
Our team develops state-of-the-art image and connectivity analysis pipelines, with AI modules for image segmentation, registration, and super-resolution, for MRI, CT, & light-sheet and two-photon microscopy.

Patient biotyping & predicting outcomes to neuromodulation
Our group applies cutting-edge neuroimaging and AI techniques to identify unique patient phenotypes in neuropsychiatric populations and predict patient outcomes to neuromodulation (MRgFUS, TMS, DBS). We further map the effects of neuromodulation on the brain’s morphology, connectivity, & metabolism.

Multiparametric investigation of the hippocampus & its subfields
The hippocampus is essential for memory, and its subregions are differentially affected in neurological disorders. We study diffusion, metabolic, and perfusion changes at the subfield level in AD and TBI patients.

AI models and computational tools for open science
Our lab develops open-source neuroscience tools (https://github.com/AICONSlab). These tools are used by numerous groups within Canada and internationally, including the USA, Germany, & Switzerland, and have been downloaded thousands of times.

Recent Publications

Xu T, Hosseini S, Anderson C, Rinaldi A, Krishnan RG, Martel AL, Goubran M. A generalizable 3D framework and model for self-supervised learning in medical imaging. NPJ Digit Med. 2025 Nov 7;8(1):639. doi: 10.1038/s41746-025-02035-w. PMID: 41203891.
Attarpour A, Osmann J, Rinaldi A, Qi T, Lal N, Patel S, Rozak M, Yu F, Cho N, Squair J, McLaurin J, Raffiee M, Deisseroth K, Courtine G, Ye L, Stefanovic B, Goubran M. A deep learning pipeline for three-dimensional brain-wide mapping of local neuronal ensembles in teravoxel light-sheet microscopy. Nat Methods. 2025 Mar;22(3):600-611. doi: 10.1038/s41592-024-02583-1. Epub 2025 Jan 27. PMID: 39870865.
Ottoy J, Kang MS, Tan JXM, Boone L, Vos de Wael R, Park BY, Bezgin G, Lussier FZ, Pascoal TA, Rahmouni N, Stevenson J, Fernandez Arias J, Therriault J, Hong SJ, Stefanovic B, McLaurin J, Soucy JP, Gauthier S, Bernhardt BC, Black SE, Rosa-Neto P, Goubran M. Tau follows principal axes of functional and structural brain organization in Alzheimer's disease. Nat Commun. 2024 Jun 12;15(1):5031. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-49300-2. PMID: 38866759.
Hsueh B, Chen R, Jo Y, Tang D, Raffiee M, Kim YS, Inoue M, Randles S, Ramakrishnan C, Patel S, Kim DK, Liu TX, Kim SH, Tan L, Mortazavi L, Cordero A, Shi J, Zhao M, Ho TT, Crow A, Yoo AW, Raja C, Evans K, Bernstein D, Zeineh M, Goubran M, Deisseroth K. Cardiogenic control of affective behavioural state. Nature. 2023 Mar;615(7951):292-299. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-05748-8. Epub 2023 Mar 1. PMID: 36859543.
Goubran M, Leuze C, Hsueh B, Aswendt M, Ye L, Tian Q, Cheng MY, Crow A, Steinberg GK, McNab JA, Deisseroth K, Zeineh M. Multimodal image registration and connectivity analysis for integration of connectomic data from microscopy to MRI. Nat Commun. 2019 Dec 3;10(1):5504. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13374-0. PMID: 31796741.

Graduate Students

Katrina Carver
Jazlynn Tan
Brendan Wood
Tony Xu