Using Imaging to reveal disease's deepest secrets.

How do you know if a patient has an infection or whether it is simply inflammation? The symptoms are pretty similar and it can be really difficult to tell them apart; treatment options for the patient will be quite different. Nuclear Medicine can provide an answer e.g. by making the patient’s own blood radioactive or using radioactive sugar molecules. However, this won’t tell us what kind of infection a patient has and that is sometimes just as important to know. We are investigating ways to see if we can identify, not just if the patient has an infection but, what kind of infection they have.

The placenta holds a special place in myth, legend, science and evolution. It is perhaps the most interesting organ ever to have evolved, with the job of coordinating resources between at least two genetically different individuals. This talk will be a whistlestop tour of where the placenta came from and where it might be going. The placenta is without a doubt your most important organ, without it you wouldn't be here!

Not all radiation is the same. There is a great choice of type of radiation, ways to shape the beams, or it could even be injected into blood stream of a cancer patient to make sure that the radiation energy hits just the bad cancer cells. Equally, not all cancers are the same. Also, a tumour is made up cancer cells, but also immune and other cells. The way immune cells interact with cancer cells depends on the signals they receive. Here, I will delve into these topics and show you the power of what non-damaging radioactive imaging can have when working out if radiotherapy has been successful.