Between the laboratory and the clinic lies a long and often heartbreaking distance, where treatments that heal mice fail to heal people. Researchers at USC have identified one quiet culprit in this gap: the inconsistent ways scientists have measured brain injury across different machines, institutions, and hands. By building an automated MRI analysis pipeline tested across more than 2,400 animals at six research centers, they have brought a new kind of rigor to the earliest stages of stroke research — not to promise cures, but to ensure that what we measure, we measure honestly.