BEIJING, March 22 (Xinhua) -- The Multimode Trans-Scale Biomedical Imaging Facility, one of China's key scientific infrastructure projects, officially passed national acceptance on Friday, marking a milestone in advancing life sciences research and the diagnosis and treatment of major diseases, said the Institute of Biophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Referred to as a "life observatory," the facility enables trans-scale and panoramic observation to reveal life's mysteries, said Cheng Heping, director and chief scientist of the National Biomedical Imaging Center at Peking University (NBIC), which oversees the facility's construction and operation.
Beginning construction in 2019, the facility was jointly initiated by Peking University and the Institute of Biophysics, and built with several research institutions including Harbin Institute of Technology and University of Science and Technology of China, with a total investment of 1.717 billion yuan (about 237 million U.S. dollars).
The facility's core components comprise a multimodal medical imaging platform, a multimodal living cell imaging platform, a multimodal high-resolution molecular imaging platform, and a multi-scale image data integration system. It is capable of conducting trans-scale visualization and precise measurement of the structure and function of living organisms from molecules to cells, tissues, and entire organisms.
The facility's imaging capabilities span ten orders of magnitude--from angstroms to meters--providing panoramic insights into disease progression dynamics to better support drug development and clinical treatment, explained Sun Yujie, deputy dean of the College of Future Technology at Peking University.
"Without observing molecular, protein, cellular and organ-level changes during disease progression, we cannot reveal disease mechanisms or implement precision therapy," Sun added.
Inside the facility's laboratory, Gao Jiahong, director of Peking University's Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Research Center, introduced a helium-free magnetoencephalography (MEG) system developed by his team. Patients wearing a MEG helmet or lying within the device can have their neuromagnetic signal patterns displayed in real time on a computer screen.
"While CT and MRI reveal structural brain abnormalities, they cannot detect abnormal neuronal signals in neuropsychiatric disorders like epilepsy and depression," Gao explained. "Our system captures subtle, transient neural signal changes during disease episodes, providing a powerful tool for both clinical diagnosis and brain research." The technology has already been implemented in clinical settings at selected hospitals.
According to the Institute of Biophysics, the facility has attracted 29 major project proposals in digital life sciences, focusing on systematic research and development in fields including brain science and tumor diagnosis and treatment.
Future plans include providing imaging omics research tools for the study of complex life processes and major diseases, enabling comprehensive analysis of significant biomedical challenges and promoting a paradigm shift in biomedical research.
The facility will also establish an industrial innovation alliance with universities, research institutions and companies in biomedical imaging sector to foster an integrated ecosystem of industry-academia-research collaboration.
According to Sun, the facility will open to domestic researchers and forge international collaborations with biomedical imaging platforms in the United States, the European Union, and other countries and regions. "We welcome global scientists to collaborate through this international platform," Sun emphasized. ■