NWO awards 10-year consortium grant to IMAGINE project of Peter Koopmans

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a 10-year consortium grant to the IMAGINE project, a large-scale collaboration between academic institutions and industry. Together with public and private partners, mainly Philips and UMC Utrecht, the NWO will invest a total budget of 54 million euros in a new world-leading innovation lab for radiotherapy and radiology.

The IMAGINE consortium aims to speed up the development, innovation and clinical introduction of image-guided, minimally invasive techniques. An example is the MR-Linac, a magnetic resonance-guided linear accelerator that combines MRI with radiation therapy to target and treat cancer. The main goals of IMAGINE include providing cancer patients with faster access to the latest image-guided treatments and offering more minimally invasive procedures. Additionally, the project focuses on lowering healthcare costs, developing AI-driven techniques to address staffing shortages, and educating healthcare professionals for the day-treatment clinics of the future. This includes the clinical introduction of current and future technologies, along with the necessary organizational and economic considerations for widespread implementation.

The innovation lab will be located at UMC Utrecht, and 1.5 million euros will go to Radboudumc, half of which will go to Peter Koopmans to hire two PhD candidates for MR-Linac AI research. The other half will go to the research group early health technology assessment of the recently appointed professor Janneke Grutters.

Read more about the grant in this news item on the website of UMC Utrecht, this LinkedIn announcement of UMC Utrecht, or this NWO announcement.