This afternoon at Parliament House, the Hon Julian Hill (Assistant Minister for International Education) launched a video highlighting how Australia is using world-leading advanced imaging to transform health research and improve patient outcomes, part of a Science & Technology Australia (STA) series called Ideas to Impact.
Ideas to Impact brings together stories of the people, research infrastructure and ideas accelerating Australia’s science and technology capabilities.
NIF features in this inaugural series. Our story focuses on just one of the many inspiring areas of work that NIF Scientists and users take part in: total body PET and the role of national research infrastructure in turning advanced imaging research into practical health outcomes.
By connecting expertise across Australia, NIF and its research partners are helping ensure that world-leading imaging science does not stop at discovery, but continues towards practical applications and better outcomes for patients.
Revealing journeys from capability to discovery, to national benefit
The NIF story is one of seven launched today; others highlight national capabilities spanning critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, medical diagnostics, digital infrastructure, research and commercialisation, as well as Australia’s future STEM workforce.
STA CEO Ryan Winn said the series helps to demonstrate the often-invisible journey of Australia’s “extraordinary scientific capability” from laboratories to the real benefits for the country’s people, industry and economy.
“Ideas to Impact puts that journey front and centre. These are stories about Australian researchers and organisations solving real problems, building new capabilities and creating opportunities for our future.”
This release of stories during National Science Week comes as Australia considers how to implement recommendations from the Ambitious Australia report, which NIF welcomed – and in particular acknowledged the crucial role of research infrastructure to leverage Australia’s scientific strengths, help address national priorities, and foster new industries.
“If we want to turn more great Australian ideas into Australian jobs, businesses, technologies and economic value, we need a research and innovation system that is connected from discovery through to impact,” says Mr Winn.
For NIF, total body PET illustrates what those connections can achieve: world-leading research infrastructure, spread throughout a national network, with enviable scientific expertise – all working together to create new knowledge and impact for Australian people and beyond.
The powerful example of total body PET
Medical imaging has long helped clinicians see inside the human body and make decisions about patient care.
But advances in imaging technology are now opening new possibilities for researchers to understand the body in unprecedented detail – and accelerating how fast new ideas can move from labs to patients’ hospital beds.
Unlike conventional PET scanners, which image a limited region of the body at a time, total body PET can capture information from the entire body. This gives researchers an opportunity to observe the movement and behaviour of biological processes across organs and tissues in real time, generating new insights into health and disease.
“There’s a lot of potential to do very new and exciting imaging protocols for researchers. This might involve very rapid scan times, … very low radiation dose, which of course opens up the potential for things like paediatric studies,” says Dr Kathy Willowson, a senior medical physics specialist at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney in partnership with the NIF Node the University of Sydney.
Using total body PET scanners at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and The Alfred, in association with partners from Melbourne and Monash universities, researchers can develop better ways to track cancer’s spread and create precise new nuclear treatments.
“And it’s much better to establish a network of scientists and research infrastructure capability. This is a network that’s now growing not just in Victoria, but right around Australia,” says Professor Michael Hofman, head of the PET/CT program at PeterMac.
Many conditions such as healthy ageing, schizophrenia, and neurodegenerative illnesses like dementia affect both brain and body, says Assoc Professor Sharna Jamadar, NIF Node Monash Biomedical Imaging’s Deputy Director, and Associate Professor (Research).
“However, we haven’t been able to measure this sort of interaction between mind and body in real time, and that’s really what total body PET allows us to do,” she says.
These technological advances must translate into benefits for patients – cancer patient Lee explains. “Every year that I survive, it means that the technology gets better. And it also means that the treatment gets better. It’s just absolutely amazing technology,” he says.
Australia has a distinctive approach to total body PET: we are the first to develop a national, networked approach, bringing researchers and imaging expertise together to accelerate discovery and support the development of real-world applications.
This networked model demonstrates the broader value of national research infrastructure: the impact comes not only from individual pieces of equipment, but from connecting people, capabilities and ideas across the country.
NIF sincerely thanks our wonderful interviewees who illustrated the power of total body PET, the Partner Nodes and their Directors and Co-directors, the facility teams and their media teams. NIF is nothing without all these people.
Read more of our stories about total body PET:
- Total body PET one year on: win–wins for both patient care and research translation
- Early successes from total body PET work for pregnant patients
- $15M funding for the next total body PET scanner in Melbourne
- Celebrating the first total body PET facility in Australia for research and clinical use
- The fascinating story of how total body PET began
- Watch the full webinar series (of 10) about Australian National Total Body PET
STA's Ideas to Impact series
Innovation and R&D
The National Imaging Facility connects researchers with advanced imaging infrastructure, including total-body PET, to accelerate discoveries in cancer, neuroscience, cardiology and drug development.