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National Research Council - Institute For Biodiagnostics (NRC - IBD):
Overview
Advancing Disease Diagnosis and Medical Devices in Canada
Recognized globally for research and innovation, Canada's National Research Council (NRC) is a leader in the development of an innovative, knowledge-based economy for Canada through science and technology.
Research at NRC-IBD focuses on improving medical diagnosis, and developing and commercializing innovative medical devices for the minimally invasive diagnosis of diseases. The resulting methodologies are transferred into clinical practice and to the medical devices industry. Research is interdisciplinary, involving interactions between physicians, biologists, physicists, computer scientists and the business community. Research activities are focused around optical and magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy, device prototyping, bioinformatics and medical software.
Areas of research include:
- infectious diseases
- assessment and management of strokes and cardiovascular disease
- cancer detection, monitoring and prognosis
- heart and brain protection during heart surgery
- assessment of burns and wound healing
- development of non-invasive medical instruments
Partnerships Drive Innovation
The institute establishes partnerships with universities, businesses, the medical community and other sectors. Now located in three provinces, NRC-IBD employs 140 people with skills ranging from engineering to medicine. It operates two satellite labs: the NRC Institute for Biodiagnostics (West) in Calgary and the NRC Institute for Biodiagnostics (Atlantic) in Halifax. Winnipeg's NRC Centre for the Commercialization of Biomedical Technology, adjacent to NRC-IBD, helps new entrepreneurs and small Canadian firms grow and commercialize biomedical technology in Manitoba and Canada, and reach markets around the world.
The impact of NRC-IBD's research for Canadians is twofold. Canadians have the advantage of improved disease diagnosis, improved surgical outcomes, and, as a result, a more efficient health care system. The second benefit to Canadians is a stronger medical devices industry, with increased jobs and enhanced revenues, and greater wealth for Canada.
Maximizing Impact
To maximize its research impact, NRC-IBD focuses on selected diagnostic techniques based on magnetic resonance and biomedical photonics technologies. Although there are a range of institutions with magnetic resonance and medical photonics expertise, few span the full research and development spectrum of NRC-IBD, or have the ability to translate basic research into a prototype that has been validated in preclinical and clinical studies.
A Focused Approach
NRC-IBD has focused on technology development in the following major areas:
Magnetic Resonance (MR)
MR is one of the principal tools at NRC-IBD. Researchers focus on developing innovative hardware and software for MR instruments. Desired goals include increasing diagnostic accuracy (sensitivity and specificity) and decreasing data acquisition time (allowing clinical implementation of procedures and increased efficiency of imaging suites).
Biomedical Photonics
Biomedical photonics encompasses a wide range of optical techniques showing great diagnostic power and potential. NRC-IBD possesses excellent instrumentation for spectroscopy and imaging, using infrared, near-infrared, fluorescence, thermal, Raman and optical coherence methods.
These instruments are smaller and more affordable than the large MR instruments, and often have higher detection sensitivity for important biochemical components. Combined with advances in molecular imaging, optical techniques show great promise for rapid, sensitive and specific diagnosis. In particular, biomedical photonics techniques offer certain advantages – speed, low cost, small footprint and ease of use – which are critical to effective point-of-care diagnosis.
Biomedical Informatics
Diagnostics requires accumulating large amounts of data for each patient. Analyzing such complex and extensive datasets by conventional methods is very labour-intensive and often impossible. Biomedical informatics researchers – a skilled group of mathematicians and computer specialists – focus on developing new methods for analyzing data, including innovative approaches to the classification of medical data, such as the analysis of MR spectral data on breast biopsies for accurate diagnosis of cancer, lymph node involvement and vascular invasion. These classification approaches have been extended to both DNA arrays and proteomics data from mass spectra. Recently, biomedical informatics researchers have been modelling the transmission and control of infectious diseases, a particularly timely advance in the global health environment.
Pre-clinical and Clinical Research
NRC-IBD undertakes pre-clinical and clinical research in targeted areas that are relevant to Canadians and the Canadian economy. This research attempts to increase our understanding of disease pathophysiology, tests novel diagnostic technologies and supports the biotechnology sector. The targeted areas are cancer, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases and neuroscience. These health diseases and conditions, when combined, affect a significant portion of the population.
Success Story
- "Saving Lives By The Numbers"
Imagine using math and physics to develop ways to diagnose serious diseases in their treatable stages, using detection methods that are less traumatic to patients and more cost-effective to the health care system. More ...
Research Profile
