UCIM’s Biomedical imaging and metabolomics section features the following platforms to give support to researchers:

Imaging platform:

The section has a great variety of equipment used for in-vitro imaging. They are non-invasive techniques allowing to obtain radioactive and non-radioactive optical images. From them, anatomic and metabolic information (cellular function) can be obtained. Depending on the applied technique, it’s sometimes necessary to administer certain agents/contrasts, both radioactive (radiopharmaceuticals) and non-radioactive (bioluminescent & fluorescent agents and/or X-ray contrasts). One of the upsides of this type of techniques is the possibility of carrying out pathology evolution and treatment efficacy studies.

Likewise, the platform features an X-ray irradiation system allowing to irradiate small research animals, tissues, cells, biological samples, etc. Moreover, it includes a camera allowing for irradiation and image acquisition at the same time, an application which is particularly useful in the X-Ray image-guided radiotherapy field.

Metabolomics platform:

This part works on obtaining metabolomic profiles of liquid, solid and semisolid samples. Different kinds of spectres are obtained; and from them, a series of quantifiable metabolites are determined. This quantification is sometimes done with patterns and/or standards.

Moreover, the section has a series of devices allowing to obtain levels, histograms and scatter charts of all the different blood cell populations. On the other hand, they additionally enable to determine the concentrations of a great variety of biochemical indicators in whole blood, plasma and/or serum.