FLI’s Grand Ouest hub is one of the three hubs integrated into the infrastructure on June1, 2020.
It comprises four imaging platforms located in Rennes, Nantes, Angers and Brest: NeurInfo (Imaging and Neuroinformatics Platform), PRISM (Multi-modal Imaging and Spectroscopy Research Platform), CIMA (Applied Multimodal Imaging Center), PLaTIMed (Platform for the Design and Evaluation of Medical Devices in Brest). Members of the Biogenouest network, these platforms are supervised by the University of Rennes, Nantes University, the University of Angers, INRAE and the University of Bretagne Occidentale. Imaging facilities open to academic and industrial research cover the full spectrum of
For preclinical research, the hub has the following equipment:
– a 7T MRI located in Angers, a 4.7T MRI located in Rennes, dedicated to small animal imaging and spectroscopy, and a 1.5T MRI located in Rennes, for medium animal imaging (pig model), as well as two high-resolution NMR devices on the PRISM platform(https://www.pf-prism.org/les-equipements/).
– nuclear imaging equipment dedicated either to the average animal (miniature pig) – 1 PET-CT, 1 CT, and 2 gamma cameras on the PRISM platform(https://www.pf-prism.org/les-equipements/)– or to laboratory rodents, with a PET-MRI, a PET-CT and a unique 3-photon PET device at CIMA in Nantes(https://crci2na.univ-nantes.fr/en/research/cima). Both platforms also have radiopharmaceutical equipment for the synthesis of radiolabeled molecules.
– computed tomography devices(https://platimed.fr/)
Clinical research relies mainly on MRI and computational models implemented on the NeurInfo platform(https://www.neurinfo.org/). Neurinfo is equipped with a 3T MRI installed at Rennes University Hospital.
Key imaging expertise and know-how developed as part of FLI’s scientific activities
Thanks to these facilities, the Grand Ouest node has expertise in the following areas:
- Quantification of physiological and metabolic parameters (perfusion, concentration of molecules of interest, body composition, receptor density) and other biomarkers (water diffusion, relaxation time, etc.) for preclinical applications in oncology and nutrition (PRISM platform),
- Preclinical molecular imaging applied to immunology and oncology,
- image processing and analysis in the context of oncology
- tomographic image reconstruction
- Neuroinformatics in the context of nervous system diseases,
- Population imaging.
Preclinical and clinical imaging platforms / scientific managers :
- PRISM(https://www.pf-prism.org/les-equipements/)/ Pierre-Antoine Eliat
- CIMA in Nantes (https://crci2na.univ-nantes.fr/en/research/cima)/ Michel Cherel
- NeurInfo (https://www.neurinfo.org/fr/)/ Emmanuel Caruyer
- PLaTIMed(https://platimed.fr/) / Guillaume Dardenne
Research laboratories supported by the node’s platforms :
- UAR 3480 CNRS, US18 INSERM, Biosit (https://biosit.univ-rennes.fr/)
- INRAE 1341, INSERM 1317, Institut NuMeCan, Equipe EAT(https://numecan.fr/eat/)
- UMR INSERM 1099, LTSI(https://ltsi.univ-rennes.fr/)
- UMR INSERM 1066 – CNRS 6021, MINT(https://mint.univ-angers.fr/en/index.html)
- INSERM UMR1307 – CNRS UMR6075 – CRCI2NA (Team 2) (https://crci2na.univ-nantes.fr/en/research/team-2)
- UMR CNRS 6074, ERL U1228 Empenn(https://team.inria.fr/empenn)
- UMR INSERM 1101 UBO IMT Atlantique LaTIM(https://latim.univ-brest.fr/ )


