image: Propotype developed by the team, and already tested with a volunteer, to reconstruct breast images.
Credit: Raquel Conceição.
The European project entitled “Bone, Brain, Breast and Axillary Medical Microwave Imaging Twinning (3BAtwin)” has been awarded with €1.5M to reinforce our training on Medical Microwave Imaging (MMWI). The project is led by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Ciências ULisboa) (Portugal), in collaboration with University of Galway (Ireland) and Turin Polytechnic University (Italy).
The goal of this twinning project is to accelerate the transition of Medical Microwave Imaging “from the research bench to the patient’s bedside”, thereby contributing to the development of MMWI applications in bone osteoporosis and bone cancer, brain ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes, breast cancer and metastasized axillary lymph nodes.
“Around 70% of the project aims to train our human resources and reinforce our infrastructure in terms of MMWI in specific knowledge, methodologies and techniques”, says Raquel Conceição, project leader, researcher at Institute of Biophysics and Biomedical Engineering - IBEB, Ciências ULisboa. Raquel Conceição intends to establish an MMWI association at an international level and organize a scientific conference on the subject, which will have two editions during the 3BAtwin project in Lisbon, open to all researchers in this field. The ‘3BAtwin’ project will last three years, beginning later in 2024.
Raquel Conceição was the first doctoral researcher in Portugal with a doctorate in the area of Medical Microwave Imaging. She coordinates IBEB – Ciências ULisboa and is Vice-President of the Portuguese Committee of the International Union of Radio Science for the K-Commission ‘Electromagnetism in Biology and Medicine’.
According to the European Research Executive Agency webpage, Twinning ‘aims to enhance networking activities between research institutions of the Widening countries acting as coordinators, and top-class leading counterparts at European Union level’, by linking at least two research institutions from two different Member States or Associated Countries’.