Glasgow University drives forward innovation in high resolution imaging

Investment in imaging could pay dividends in the battle against chronic disease, writes Rosalind Erskine

Thanks to the recentlyopened Imaging Centre of Excellence (ICE) at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow is fast becoming a hub for the development for imaging and research into chronic diseases.

Medical imaging is the visualisation of body parts, tissues, or organs, for use in clinical diagnosis, treatment and disease monitoring. Imaging techniques encompass the fields of radiology, nuclear medicine and optical imaging and image-guided intervention.

Glasgow University’s ICE building is bringing together imaging specialists from a broad range of disciplines to work together on the same site – something which will help problem solving, communication and analysis across the board.

Dr Carol Clugston, chief operating officer at the univerity’s college of medical, veterinary and life sciences, said: “In Glasgow we have a huge amount of chronic disease unfortunately. We work with NHS Glasgow and Greater Clyde which is the biggest health-board in the UK, and we are working in the biggest hospital in Europe – the Queen Elizabeth Hospital – with the most chronic disease in Europe so we have the ideal environment for us to capitalise on all these aspects, and to be able to work with all the data that is coming from all these sources.”

She continued: “One of the main areas of research where Glasgow University is really leading the way within the UK and possibly globally is imaging data.

“Here at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital site we have got one of the first seven tester MRI scanners, which is an ultra-high resolution scanner that can produce high quality, very detailed images that are of a resolution which is much greater than the current standard.”

MRI has revolutionised diagnostic medicine, allowing unprecedented visualisation of anatomy, morphology, blood flow, metabolism and biochemistry in vivo. In addition, it is now finding applications in both geosciences and engineering.

“The high magnetic field of the new 7T scanner allows extremely high resolution scanning of the body, potentially letting us see structures down to one millimetre in size or even smaller,” said Professor Keith Muir, SINAPSE chair of clinical imaging.

0 The 7T scanner being installed