Which are the reasons for the Action?

Monday, 17 October 2011 at 09:30 CET, by SiteAdmin

The Action has a strong scientific/technological advance, since the field of PET/MRI is a peak research direction for industry and academia. The role of PET in treatment planning and assessment of response to therapy has a strong social impact, since cancer is one of the main causes of death worldwide. Optimizations in treatment planning and fast assessment of response to therapy have not only social impact, but also significant economical benefits for individuals, health insurance organizations and national economies. Besides the technological variations and benefits of PET/MRI, the minimized radiation compared to PET/CT is considered as another important benefit, especially for diagnostic examinations. Finally, the important role that PET/MRI is expected to play in preclinical imaging must be highly emphasized. Preclinical small animal imaging provides not only valuable in vivo information, but also dramatically reduces the number of animals that are needed. This is in accordance with European and International legislation and bioethics. The Action will provide a framework for collaboration between European institutions that have significant experience and research activity in scientific fields that are complementary for PET/MRI research.

Through this Action several important issues are foreseen to be addressed:
1) Bridge the gap between molecular biologists, tracer and detector developers
2) Extensive study of new detector materials and geometries for improving PET/MRI systems
3) Design, develop and evaluate bimodal contrast agents and nanoparticles with attractive biological applications in diagnosis and therapy
4) Work towards the optimization of existing technical and experimental methodologies and decrease in systems cost
5) Explore and promote the deployment of new imaging methods and instrumentation

It is expected that:
1) New PET/MR compatible detectors and imaging prototypes
2) New bimodal tracers
3) New image reconstruction and processing algorithms and software
4) New preclinical and clinical protocols for bimodal imaging will result and will find application with both scientific and social impact.

This will be achieved by:

• maximizing the use of existing infrastructure and resources
• share of knowledge through meetings
• training of young researchers through short scientific missions
• interact with current running projects and prepare and support new ones
• communicate with scientists from complementary disciplines in MI

The Action will merge several technological areas: Nuclear Physics, Instrumentation, Computer Technology, (Bio-) Chemistry and Life Sciences. Finally, members of the network are specialized in different topics and are uniformly distributed in Europe; thus they can act as local centres to spread and promote participation and cooperation of more partners.