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£7.5 million boost for lung research at University of Sheffield

George Osborne, has announced the University of Sheffield is to be awarded £7.5 million to expand its development of clinical lung imaging.

The Academic Unit of Radiology in the University’s Department of Cardiovascular Science, one of key research groups contributing to the recently established Insigneo Institute for in silicoMedicine, is involved in the research and development of technology for clinical lung imaging which provides detailed images of patient’s lungs without relying on X-rays’ radiation.

Using techniques developed in Sheffield, by the Pulmonary, Lung and Respiratory Imaging Sheffield (POLARIS) project, led by Professor Jim Wild, the team creates functional images of the lungs in patients affected by conditions such as smoking, cystic fibrosis, emphysema, pulmonary hypertension and asthma.

The grant, which is made up of £6.5 million from the Medical Research Council and a further £1 million from the British Heart Foundation, will allow the expansion of the ground-breaking image acquisition and processing facilities in Sheffield.

The award is part of a £230 million grant for technologies to revolutionise research into disease led by the Medical Research Council (MRC).

Jim Wild, Professor of Magnetic Resonance Physics and NIHR Research Professor in Pulmonary Imaging, said: “This grant will allow continued research into MRI scanner hardware and image acquisition methods and their clinical translation ensuring Sheffield and the UK leads in this important area of diagnostic pulmonary medicine.

“The new image processing laboratory will allow us to process large volumes of digital imaging data for phenotyping pulmonary diseases together with computational modelling approaches being pioneered in the University’s Insigneo Institute for in silico medicine which brings together engineers, scientists and clinicians from across the University of Sheffield, and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .