From 20-23 March, Donostia-San Sebastián will be the venue for the 13th European Molecular Imaging Meeting (EMIM 2018), the most important congress in Europe on molecular imaging. The meeting is organised by the European Society for Molecular Imaging (ESMI). CIC biomaGUNE researchers are members of the local organising committee of the ESMI.
The aim of the event is to look into the latest developments in this field. Molecular imaging techniques not only enable diseases to be detected in their early stages, often prior to the appearance of clinical symptoms, but also make it possible to assess the response to treatment faster and more efficiently than anatomical techniques.
Molecular imaging comprises all the different modalities of biomedical imaging which enable biological processes in living organisms, be they test animals, healthy volunteers or patients, to be detected, in vivo and in a non-invasive way, at cellular and molecular level. Whilst anatomical techniques such as X-rays, computed tomography (TC) and ultrasound images (more commonly known as echography) provide images of the morphology of organs and tissues, molecular imaging techniques, such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), provide a view of how the organism is functioning and enable chemical and biological processes to be measured.
The venue for the congress, which on previous occasions has been held in Cologne (2017) and Utrecht (2016), will be the Centro Kursaal in San Sebastián. Both the location of the research centre itself and the hard work of the Molecular Imaging Unit of CIC biomaGUNE have been key factors in the organisers’ decision to hold this event in San Sebastián. The 13th EMIM is designed to raise the profile of the ESMI in countries in the south of Europe such as Spain, France and Italy, and to promote their cooperation and interaction with the rest of Europe. Molecular imaging is a relatively modern branch of science and is constantly evolving. The congress will give priority to participant networking, a key factor for the exchange of ideas and the continuous improvement of imaging tools.
CIC biomaGUNE researchers Jordi Llop, Abraham Martín and Pedro Ramos are members of the local organising committee. A further eight people from the research centre will take active part in the congress as volunteers.