Completed Lungs & Breathing

Expansion of state-of-the-art MR imaging infrastructure for pulmonary disease stratification: POLARIS

Funder MRC (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation University of Sheffield
Funding £8.7M
Period Mar 2015 — Sept 2024

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Sheffield is building a national distribution centre for hyperpolarised gases to make lung MRI scans work better across the UK. The problem is that standard MRI struggles to image the lungs clearly because they are mostly air. Hyperpolarised gases—inhaled by patients during scanning—make lung tissue visible in stunning detail, but the equipment to produce these gases is expensive and rare. Currently, only a handful of centres have their own polarisation facilities, limiting patient access. This grant expands Sheffield’s gas production capacity so it can supply hyperpolarised gases to other hospitals that lack the equipment. If successful, the project will turn Sheffield into a national hub, allowing more UK hospitals to offer advanced lung imaging without building their own facilities. This could improve diagnosis and monitoring of lung diseases across all age groups, from children to adults. The new state-of-the-art 1.5T scanner will also support clinical trials with drug companies, helping to test new treatments. The work builds on Sheffield’s existing role as a national referral centre for image-based lung disease understanding, and aims to make the UK a leading nation in this area of diagnostic medicine.

View original technical description
Summary of POLARIS The unique combination of expertise in technology development and the proven ability to translate new technologies into pioneering clinical studies at the University of Sheffield forms the basis of this application for funding. We have long-standing high-level collaborations with both Hospital Trusts in Sheffield (Sheffield Teaching Hospital and Sheffield Children's Hospital) that allow us to apply our developments in all age groups. This has established Sheffield as a national clinical referral centre for image based understanding of lung diseases, but our work has also enabled other centres within the UK to roll out the methods for the benefit of a much wider group of patients. This application is particularly timely with the award of the NIHR Research Professorship to Jim Wild in 2013, which will facilitate the national uptake of the technology at other centres. The expansion of our gas polarisation facilities enabled by this grant will have many benefits for our collaborating centres including creation of a national distribution facility for hyperpolarised gases for those centres that don't have their own polarisation facilities. The ongoing methodological research, clinical evaluations and work with drug companies performed on the planned new state-of-the art 1.5T scanner will ensure that the UK becomes the leading nation in this important area of diagnostic medicine.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

James Wild (Principal Investigator)Marco Viceconti (Co-Investigator)Nigel Hoggard (Co-Investigator)Paul Griffiths (Co-Investigator)

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Original classification

Research Grant

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