NIF grows to facilitate enhanced accessibility and promote impact of world-class imaging capabilities

We’re proud to welcome three new team members to enhance the accessibility of NIF’s network of state-of-the-art imaging capabilities, and highlight the impact of researchers, health professionals and industry utilising imaging to unlock solutions to major challenges.

Two Senior Managers have been appointed to lead the implementation of a national coordination strategy, including enhanced accessibility, across Australia’s advanced imaging network.

The enhanced accessibility will enable increased engagement with multi-site, large scale projects which will translate to collaborative improved outcomes for major health challenges such as brain injuries, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and neurological disorders including epilepsy and dementia.

In addition to this, a new Senior Science Communicator has been appointed in partnership with Therapeutic Innovation Australia (TIA), to highlight the nationally significant and impactful research, enabled by TIA and NIF as part of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

Senior Manager and Senior Research Scientist – National Magnetic Resonance Capability

Dr Shawna Farquharson has been appointed to the role of Senior Manager and Senior Research Scientist, National Magnetic Resonance Capability, and brings over 25 years of experience in MRI to the role, with a focus on translation of advanced MRI techniques, from research to the clinic.

Shawna will lead the project management of our national MRI capability, coordinating and harmonising Australia’s advanced imaging network and increasing engagement with multi-site studies and projects.

Senior Manager – National Data Capability

Peter Bugeia is an eResearch professional, and has been appointed as Senior Manager, National Data Capability. He brings significant experience providing research computing, research data storage and management solutions to Australian researchers.

Peter will be responsible for the refinement of and accessibility to critical NIF data, including large scale national image repositories.

Senior Science Communicator

Erik de Wit has been appointed as NIF’s Senior Science Communicator and has a background in journalism and corporate communications, with a focus on science, medical research and tertiary education.

Erik will be responsible for sharing stories of cutting-edge science, collaboration and translation which serve to highlight the benefit and impact of NIF’s capabilities.

iSRS 2025 to be hosted in Australia

The 2025 International Symposium on Radiopharmaceutical Sciences (iSRS) will be hosted in Australia.

The National Imaging Facility supported Australia’s bid to host the 26th bi-annual global event.

The announcement was made at the 2022 event last month in Nantes, France, where it was also revealed NIF UNSW Facility Fellow Dr Giancarlo Pascali will be the upcoming Chair.

Dr Pascali said the iSRS is the most important conference in the field of basic radiochemistry developments, often debuting significant radiopharmaceutical innovations which will be introduced to clinical practice in the coming years.

“The iSRS has always been focused on the scientific grounds of our discipline and featuring examples of clinical success. It covers all the areas of radiochemistry, from targetry to imaging, preclinical imaging, radiometals, and the 18F and 11C staples,” Dr Pascali said.

The event is known for its engagement with new generations of radiochemists, with lectures mainly delivered by PhD students and early career researchers.

“In the last few years, the SRS have established the “Think Tank” team, allowing young investigators to contribute directly to the Society and the iSRS events, and even contributed to the creation of philanthropic support through the ‘Hot Atom Fund’,” he said.

“Therefore, if you are an imaging scientist interested in being among the first to witness the most promising radiopharmaceutical discoveries, or to network with the top experts and companies in the field, or simply looking to add an expert post-Doc in your lab, it is not a bad idea to join the 600+ attendees of the iSRS series!”

Dr Pascali has been a member of the event’s host institution, the Society of Radiopharmaceutical Sciences (SRS), for nearly two decades, since his first iSRS (at the time known as ISRC) attendance in Sydney 2003 as an Italian PhD student.

“I have been a member of the SRS since then, actively participating with scientific contributions, and more recently being part of the Scientific committee for the eSRS in 2021 (virtual) and the coming event in Hawaii in 2023,” he said.

As Chair for the 2025 event, Dr Pascali will coordinate and drive the conference planning and delivery alongside Co-Chair Prof Michael Kassiou,the International Scientific Program Committee and the Local Arrangements Committee.

For more information about the Society of Radiopharmaceutical Sciences, visit srsweb.org.

Members of the NIF network recognised internationally as in-person conferences return

[Pictured: UNSW-NeuRA Facility Fellow, Dr Michael Green presented a study titled “Effect of Compressed SENSE on Freesurfer parcellation precision” which was a collaboration between NeuRA researchers, Philips Australia and New Zealand, and UNSW.]

In-person events have returned – and over the last few months, leading edge experts from the NIF network have attended, presented, and taken the opportunity to collaborate at conferences like ANZSNM and ISMRM.

We’re proud to acknowledge the members of the NIF network who have presented their globally significant work to the greater imaging communities.

We congratulate University of Sydney-ANSTO Node Co-Director, Prof Fernando Calamante as President of ISMRM on the success of the 2022 31^st Annual Meeting hosted in London, UK in May.

We also recognise the incredible achievement of Dr Shawna Farquharson as recipient of the ISMRT 2022 Distinguished Service Award at the same event.

Back in Australia, NIF kicked off events with a Molecular imaging and Radiopharmaceuticals Capability Showcase at ANZSNM. We were honoured to invite world-class speakers from within our network, Prof Steven Meikle, A/Prof Roslyn Francis, Prof Gary Egan, Prof Kristofer Thurecht and Dr John Bennett to present during the NIF session.

We look forward to seeing more of our network at upcoming events – stay tuned for the NIF Scientific Symposium next month in Sydney. Save the date for Friday 12 August.

Here are some more highlights from the NIF network attending events so far this year:

Markus Barth

QLD Node Director

ISMRM

Why did you attend? Many reasons: present group results; moderator of sessions; member of study groups and initiatives

What was the highlight of the event for you? Catching up with fellow researchers

What would you say to someone considering attending next meeting? Best check the hybrid setup, i.e. what is available in person and what is available online

Michael Green

NeuRA Facility Fellow

ISMRM

Why did you attend? Primarily it was a great way to re-connect with colleagues and share ideas in an old-fashioned, non-Zoom type of way. I presented a study titled “Effect of Compressed SENSE on Freesurfer parcellation precision” which was a collaboration between NeuRA researchers, Philips Australia and New Zealand, and UNSW. The study assessed the reliability of an MRI acceleration techniques designed to speed up the time it takes to acquire images. We wanted to provide a guideline for MR researchers wanting to reduce scan time while acquiring high quality data.

What was the highlight of the event for you? The face-to-face aspect of a conference was a real highlight. It was a nice compliment and surprise to see Philips also present data from our study to a global audience as validation for their acceleration techniques employed on their MRI machines. I also received some interesting feedback regarding the study analysis which I may implement before publishing the manuscript.

What would you say to someone considering attending next meeting? Study the conference schedule well before attending then pick and choose which seminars you’d like to attend. Then talk to as many people as possible. In person!

Joseph Ioppolo

UWA Facility Fellow

ANZSNM

Why did you attend? This is a good meeting to attend to connect with the other radiochemists in Australia. Due to COVID I had not had a chance to do this in a long while. I was also very keen to see the Q-TRaCE labs at Royal Brisbane, as we have a good working relationship between them and us at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. I was able to let people know I had moved across to the NIF Node at UWA and was able to speak about our new lab and facilities being built now in Perth during my talk on the Saturday

What was the highlight of the event for you? While ANZSNM was a great chance to hear some great talks and connect with a lot of people, it was also exciting to tour the labs at Q-TRaCE and the Centre for Advanced Imaging at UQ, where we also had our national Cyclotron User Group meeting.

What would you say to someone considering attending next meeting? There are just not that many radiochemists in Australia, and the ANZSNM (along with the EPSM) is a great opportunity to see meet each other in person and see how the radiopharmaceuticals we make are being used to image and treat disease around the country.

Sjoerd Vos

UWA Facility Fellow

ISMRM

Why did you attend? I presented a project shared between my current role as NIF fellow and my previous job in London.

What was the highlight of the event for you? My highlight was discussing potential new collaborations within Australia and internationally.

What would you say to someone considering attending next meeting? I think this is also a key reason to go to these conferences – to help explore new collaborations to benefit our imaging centres and community.

Shenjun Zhong

Monash Informatics Fellow

ISMRM (Virtual)

Why did you attend? My abstract was accepted as an online power pitch presentation in the ISMRM 2022 conference. And I virtually co-chaired one of the gather.town sessions in the theme of imaging processing and analysis.

What was the highlight of the event for you? The main highlight was the talk provided by one of the famous AI researchers, Yann LeCun, and his topic was ‘Future AI research in medical imaging‘. The key take-home message is the shifting from supervised to self-supervised learning framework in general AI and medical imaging research.

Meet our new Fellows

Meet the newest members of Australia’s advanced imaging network.

Their expertise is vital in applying imaging technologies, processing and interpreting imaging data, and applying imaging to solve complex problems.

We’re proud to extend our welcome to, and introduce, the newest members of NIF’s Fellows network, joining our team of experts enabling Australian imaging science to unlock solutions to major challenges.

Mahdieh Dashtbani Moghari

USyd/ANSTO Facility Fellow

Ryan O’Hare Doig

SAHMRI Facility Fellow

Parisa Zakavi

Monash Facility Fellow

Judy Zhu

Macquarie Facility Fellow

#ImagingTheFuture Week: Unlocking solutions to major health challenges

#ImagingTheFuture Week: Unlocking solutions to major health challenges

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s (CZI) Imaging the Future Week puts a spotlight on the significance of imaging science in biomedicine, and the importance of building a vibrant imaging community across the world to tackle these challenges at scale.

Imaging science and the highly skilled researchers behind it are vital to addressing global health challenges, and driving innovation in disease management, prevention, and cure.

The National Imaging Facility (NIF) invests in state-of-the-art equipment and partners with world-class experts to process and interpret data and apply imaging to solve challenging health problems.

CEO Prof Wojtek Goscinski said he was proud of the NIF’s partnerships which enable the translation of discoveries through to real world applications to improve the health of the population.

“Advanced imaging techniques make it possible to deepen our understanding of health and disease in the human body through visualisation,” Prof Goscinski said.

“Imaging already plays a critical role in healthcare, and the acceleration of its advancements in biomedicine are positioning us, and our colleagues world-wide to continue this work well into the future.”

“We are supportive of the efforts of CZI and I’m excited for NIF to work alongside them and our other international imaging colleagues, building a cutting-edge imaging community at the forefront of global imaging research,” Prof Goscinski said.

You can find out more about Imaging the Future Week here.

Keep scrolling to check out some of the impressive imaging work from a few of the Australian National Imaging Facility’s Nodes.

Time-of-flight angiography of the human brain using 7 Tesla MRI – courtesy of the Centre for Advanced Imaging, University of Queensland

Human Tooth CT scan – courtesy of Diana Patalwala, University of Western Australia

Angiogram scanned on the Siemens 3T Skyra magnet – courtesy of the Large Animal Research and Imaging Facility, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute

Tractography template image of a sham rat – courtesy of David Wright, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health

Imaging critical to brain cancer treatment

Imaging critical to brain cancer treatment: Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute to collaborate with Telix in ground-breaking new study

National Imaging Facility (NIF) Node partner, the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (ONJCRI) will work with globally recognised biopharmaceutical company Telix to evaluate the use of a novel radiotracer (O-(2-[18F]fluoroethyl)-L-tyrosine or ¹⁸F-FET) to image patients with glioblastoma (GBM), a type of brain cancer, with positron emission tomography (PET) (FET-PET).

The collaboration between ONJCRI and Telix will enable a synergistic approach to improving the lives of people with GBM, which is the most common primary brain cancer in adults.

The ONJCRI is a global leader in the development of immunotherapies, targeted therapeutics, and personalised cancer medicine, while Telix is focused on the development of clinical-stage products that address significant unmet medical need in oncology and rare diseases.

The FET-PET in Glioblastoma (FIG) study will recruit up to 210 recently diagnosed adult GBM patients at 10 sites around Australia, aiming to definitively establish the role of FET-PET in the management of patients with GBM. The FIG Study is funded by the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), the Australian Brain Cancer Mission (ABCM), and the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation, and also involves the Trans-Tasman Radiation Oncology Group (TROG) and the Australasian Radiopharmaceutical Trials Network (ARTnet).

The NIF’s LaTrobe University – ONJCRI Node Director, and Clinical Trial Co-Chair, Prof Andrew Scott AM said the study would utilise imaging to bring critical new treatment opportunities to light and have potentially life-saving impacts.

“Imaging is integral to effective diagnosis, staging and determination of the treatment pathway for all cancers, but is vitally important in GBM which is very aggressive and can be difficult to treat,” Professor Scott said.

“This ground-breaking study will use ¹⁸F-FET, a new PET tracer which can show us if tumour cells are active. This is a more functional imaging technique compared to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the current standard imaging tool, and could potentially provide a powerful imaging biomarker for the management of brain cancer and improve survival rates.”

National Imaging Facility CEO, Prof Wojtek Goscinski said the collaboration was an exciting opportunity to see the life-changing impacts that cutting-edge imaging capabilities can have on people living with debilitating illnesses.

“Medical imaging plays a critical role in the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of life-threatening diseases like GBM,” Prof Goscinski said.

“It is excellent to see Australian-led research use imaging with the aim to improve the treatment of patients with GBM and save lives.

“It’s exciting for NIF’s LaTrobe University – ONJCRI node to be involved in an industry partnership that has the potential to expand the country’s economic growth, and position Australia as a global leader in cancer research,” he said.

NIF Newsletter March 2021

Content

Research Spotlights:

PET for Plants
Developing a Field Ventilator

NIF Newsletter Feb 2021

Content

Research Spotlights:

Changes in the brain related to parenthood
Imaging the brain in unrestrained rats

Scientific Symposium programme | Sydney | Friday 12 August 2022

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