Medical Imaging Research Center

The final goal of medical imaging is the optimization of the acquisition, reconstruction and processing of (bio) medical images aiming to ameliorate in a multidisciplinary effort the diagnosis and therapy of patients and the understanding of clinical and fundamental biological processes.

The evolution in imaging acquisition modalities (CT, MR, US, PET, SPECT, ...) yields an explosion of image information that becomes hard to analyse in detail. New tracers and contrast agents are introduced for the visualisation of biological characteristics of the individual patient ("personalised medicine"). New opportunities are created by development in mathematics, computer sciences, evolution in hard- and software. For the extraction of relevant clinical and biological information, new techniques of image analysis, image quantification and image archiving are introduced. Most efforts of medical imaging are focussed mainly on the diseases of the century, i.e. cancer (screening, diagnosis and follow-up), neurodegenerative diseases (movement disorders and dementia), epilepsy and brain tumours, and heartand blood vessel diseases (diagnosis and therapy).