A new project with a funding of ￡850,000 is likely to improve the current knowledge of serious illnesses like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, septic shock and cancer//. The project, which is to run for four years, will include scientists, engineers and mathematicians at the University of Bath. It will examine in detail electron spin resonance imaging, a technique used in whole body scanning.

They hope that electron spin resonance imaging will eventually take a three-dimensional “snapshot” image of the chemical state of organs such as the heart. This would be an immensely important advance, and could lead to new treatments for serious illnesses.

At present instruments do not have the sensitivity or speed to do this but using the latest research into measurement techniques and data analysis could improve the sensitivity of the machinery by 100 times or more. This could, in turn, allow some images to be recorded 10,000 times faster, or with 10,000 times more spatial information.

Even relatively modest improvements in the technical performance of electron spin resonance imaging instruments are potentially very important to medical research scientists.

The Bath team will be working closely with two such experts at the University of the West of England, Bristol and Cardiff Medical School to develop the new technologies.

Electron spin resonance imaging instruments work in a similar way to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) body scanners that are already widely used in hospitals. However, whereas MRI scanners use the magnetic properties of the protons in water to generate an image, electron spin resonance instruments use the magnetic properties of electrons.

This fundamental difference makes electron spin resonance more suited to imaging chemical processes than MRI. However, it also makes it technically much more difficult, and has so far restricted its use to the research laboratory.

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