Development of methods and novel technologies in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy is a medical technique for diagnosis of diseases and their treatments’ effectiveness, and it is usually preferred due to its non-invasive nature.  One of the great challenges for being successful fighting diseases like cancer or neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, is to understand at the cellular level the biological processes that produce them. This happens at microscopic scales that escape the spatial resolution achieved with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is on the order of millimeters or hundreds of microns. 

How to go beyond that resolution barrier and be able to see the universe of cells and microstructures within each millimetric pixel of an image?

To answer this question, we enter to the world governed by the laws of quantum physics, to develop quantum technologies relevant for practical use in nuclear magnetic resonance and contribute to revolutionize the way in which we would carry out health care, medical diagnosis and even the interpretations of our own biology. To pursue these goals, we develop several research lines and strategies based on the following concepts:

Non-Invasive Technologies for Biological and Medical Applications

We are focusing on developing non-invasive “Virtual Histology” tools for identifying biomarkers of diseases and functions of tissues (e.g. cancer, neuro-degeneration, plasticity).

Quantum Technologies

We are contributing to the developing of Quantum Technologies, focused on exploiting the quantum information processing and control tools to design quantum sensors to probe matter or fields at atomic-, nano- and micro-scales. The goal is to pave the way to novel medical technologies and devices.

Boosting NMR Signals

We are developing methods to boost NMR signals as in hyperpolarization to pave the way to novel methods for metabolic and molecular imaging with NMR and MRI.