This item was published during the term of a previous administration that ended in April 2007
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New awards for medical research
15/03/2004
Scottish teams have been awarded £259,000 for new equipment to take forward research in medical imaging - much of which was pioneered in Scotland.
Announcing the awards, Professor Roland Jung, Chief Scientist at the Scottish Executive, said:
"Scotland has an outstanding international record in medical research especially in bio-engineering and bio-medical physics, with a contribution to medical imaging which has been truly unique.
"In every single new advance from ultrasound, to CT, MRI and lately proton spectroscopy imaging, Scottish researchers have contributed immensely.
"The quality of this round of awards testifies to the fact that this innovative spirit is very much alive and looking at new ways in which we can take research forward to harness the benefits of such technology for healthcare advance."
A total of £381,809 was awarded by the Chief Scientist Office for 14 pieces of equipment.
Seven of these were imaging-related, accounting for £259,000.
Grants include:
£21,637 to South Glasgow University Hospitals Trust for the materials required to build an MRI simulator. Acquisition of functional MRI data from people with neurodevelopmental disorders and neuropsychiatric disorders is problematic, and the simulator will allow such individuals to get accustomed to the environment in the simulator and therefore give fully informed consent to participate in the research.. This will then maximise efficient use of the scanner and better quality data will be obtained. These groups are under researched and so will allow representative samples to be obtained.
£40,000 for a package to upgrade the cardiac research MRI scanner in North Glasgow University Hospitals Trust to allow quantitative data to be obtained as well as the current qualitative data. Quantitative data will give a much clearer distinction between normal and abnormal tissue and will allow interventions to be evaluated, facilitating clinical trials. This will benefit research in CVD and stroke.
£35,900 for a proton spectroscopy package to upgrade the cardiac research MRI scanner in Grampian. This will facilitate research in the clinical neurosciences programme in mental health, being taken forward jointly by the University of Aberdeen and Grampian Primary Care Trust.
£44,193 to NHS Lothian University Hospital Division to purchase a functional imaging system for the research scanner at the Brain Imaging Centre. This allows imaging of what parts of the brain are responsible for which function and how these are disrupted by disease. It will be used by a range of research disciplines including paediatrics, neurosurgery, psychology, and oncology.
Grants in other areas include:
- equipment to allow state-of -the-art research in gut microbiology including Irritable Bowel Syndrome and cystic fibrosis ( Yorkhill Trust)
- a system to allow identification of leukaemia cells from bone-marrow ( Lanarkshire Acute Trust)
- £5000 for basic equipment to allow DNA identification from clinical samples to NHS Dumfries and Galloway where this widely utilised equipment is not currently available
A total of £42,242 has also been awarded to the Tayside Research Consortium to cover half the cost of an imaging system which can measure the function of the cells that line blood vessels. The other half has been raised by a charity appeal. This equipment will be used across a range of different clinical areas including stoke, hypertension, diabetes and heart failure.
The Chief Scientist Office (CSO), within the Executive's Health Department has responsibility for encouraging and supporting research into health and health care needs in Scotland. CSO supports health research through a mixture of grant and core funding totalling in excess of £47million per year.
Early interest by Lord Kelvin and John Macintyre led to Glasgow Royal Infirmary setting up the world's first x-ray service for patients in 1896 - within months of Roentgen's discovery. Sixty years later, Obstetric ultrasound was invented in Glasgow by Professor Ian Donald working with John McVicar and engineer Tom Brown.
The relatively low cost of ultrasound machines has made them truly universal - now used across the world in a range of diagnostic applications.
Allan Cormack, a South African Scot, shared the Nobel prize in 1979 with Godfrey Hounsfield for discovering CT (Computerised Tomography) x-rays. In October the following year, the world's first MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) service for patients was launched by Francis Smith at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
It used an MRI body scanner developed by a team headed by Professor John Mallard at Aberdeen University. The first MRI scan of a living head was produced in 1978 by a Scot, Dr Ian Young, at the EMI laboratories in Middlesex.