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Turkish-German 2+2 Project Collaborative Project

National Magnetic Resonance Research Center (UMRAM) of Bilkent University is partnering with ASELSAN to develop novel imaging technologies for Magnetic Particle Imaging, together with University of Lübeck and Nano4Imaging GmbH.

MRIThis Turkish-German 2+2 collaborative project was chosen as one of the 9 projects to be funded (out of 130 applications), after scientific evaluations by both countries. The 3-year project will be funded by TÜBITAK on the Turkish side and by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) on the German side. The main goal of the project is to develop MPI as a rapid and safe interventional imaging technique. The principal investigator of the project at Bilkent University is Asst. Prof. Emine Ülkü Sarıtaş, faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and UMRAM.

About Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI): MPI is a novel biomedical imaging technology, first introduced in 2005. MPI is currently utilized for imaging small animals for research purposes, and is rapidly being developed for translation into human-size applications. In MPI, human-safe superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles are injected intravenously. An image of the spatial distribution of these nanoparticles is reconstructed using their response to applied external magnetic fields. The primary target applications of MPI include angiography (imaging of blood vessels to detect diseases due to vessel occlusions), stem cell tracking, cancer imaging, and interventional imaging (real-time imaging during surgical procedures).

In this rapid development stage of MPI, researchers from world-class research centers including Bilkent University’s UMRAM, large-scale companies that develop biomedical imaging technologies, as well as young start-up companies are playing a leading role. In this collaborative project between Bilkent UMRAM and ASELSAN Research Center, compressive sensing technologies will play an important role in translating MPI to clinical applications. Bilkent UMRAM and ASELSAN Research Center had also started another collaboration on applying compressive sensing technologies to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).