Imaging inside living beings is important to understand how life develops, how healthy bodies work, and how diseases begin and progress. This demands specialized equipment and knowledge. AMICE will develop such techniques and bring them into a nationwide preclinical infrastructure. This will help researchers acquire more information. In addition, AMICE will promote re-use of images to increase efficiency in science. Through this AMICE will help Dutch life scientists revolutionize their research with unique and innovative imaging techniques and to stay at the top of the international science community.

Ultrasound Tomography is an emerging medical imaging technique with immense clinical potential. Many research groups around the globe are developing the technology behind it, design new prototype systems or explore its use for different clinical tasks. The biannual International Workshop on Medical Ultrasound Tomography (MUST) is the central event that brings all of them together. Hosting MUST 2024 in the Netherlands is therefore a great opportunity to establish the country as a central hub for a growing scientific field with huge potential to disrupt the medical device market and improve medical diagnostics worldwide.

Osteoarthritis (OA), a common joint disease, is a major source of pain, disability, and associated with high socioeconomic costs. Tools for diagnosis are expensive (MRI) or invasive (arthroscopy) and not applicable for disease monitoring or early detection of OA. In this project, a novel imaging technique will be developed, based on spectral photoacoustic imaging (sPA), to detect early changes in the joint tissue related to collagen degradation and to visualize local joint damage and grade OA. Moreover, the feasibility of in vivo sPA imaging of OA will be explored by designing and developing an in vivo PA system.