UQ’s Centre for Magnetic Resonance has beaten international competitors to win a $A1 million contract to develop magnetic resonance imaging monitoring equipment for one of the world’s leading manufacturers.
The deal with Bruker BioSpin MRI in Germany will see the Brisbane-based Centre supplying a minimum 20 units of the system — named BioTrig — per year, initially for three years.
The project confirms UQ’s international leadership role in production of medical technology equipment. The CMR is responsible for technologies incorporated in 70 percent of recently installed MRI systems produced in the $3 billion a year international market.
The new system was conceived and developed by researchers and engineers within the CMR and is now entering the production phase to fulfil orders.
CMR Director Professor David Doddrell said the Centre had committed significant resources to develop BioTrig.
“We live in an increasingly commercial environment so we must be prepared to take commercial risk to reap the potential benefits,” he said.
While it has been designed for safe, non-invasive physiological monitoring of animals in association with MRI scanners, the system has the potential for both medical and veterinary use. As part of the contract to supply the BioTrig systems to Bruker BioSpin MRI, the Centre has been invited to submit a proposal for further development in the physiological monitoring area, including clinical human use.
The technical manager of CMR’s engineering facility, Wolfgang Roffmann, said the deal sponsored through CMR spinoff company SPIN Systems Queensland, represented a new direction for the Centre.
“In the past Bruker have bought units from us which interfaced with their system but the new units are stand-alones which can be adapted to any MRI system,” he said.
Mr Roffmann said the new system allowed researchers to monitor vital signs such as pulse rate, breathing and temperature while an animal was being imaged.
“It presented interesting challenges to the development team,” he said. “For example, a human heart beats at the rate of 50 to 200 beats per minute while the heart rate of mice is between 600 to 1200 beats per minute, and their electrophysiological signals are up to 10 times smaller in amplitude than those in humans. Our system is so sensitive we are able to make movies showing the mouse heart in action with this equipment, without any harm to the animal.”
Mr Roffmann said the potential markets in this field were growing at significant rates as MRI was accepted as a conventional diagnostic tool. The BioTrig project also displayed the value of collaborative relationships between The University of Queensland, spinoff companies, and industry.
He said the CMR currently produced parts for state-of-the-art magnetic resonance microscopy instruments, which Bruker Biospin sold worldwide. The production of these parts provided employment for Queenslanders, including 20 staff at the West End engineering facility.
The Centre’s patents generate a royalty stream of approximately $2 million a year. Products developed from this research program generate further income of about $1.5 million per annum, which will increase to more than $2 million a year with the new contract.
UQ lecturer in biomedical engineering Dr Steve Wilson worked closely with the software and engineering team of Ding Hang, Cameron Barnard and Roger Mann to develop and test the first prototypes of the system.
Dr Wilson said the development was a good example of the value of teaching biomedical engineering skills at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
“The BioTrig project shows the practical implementation of these skills can be commercially viable in this country,” he said. “The skills they are learning are directly applicable to production of this sort of system and our graduates are being eagerly sought by the Australian biomedical industry. We hope to recruit some further graduates to assist us in future projects at the CMR.”
Mr Roffmann and CMR principal engineer Kurt Luescher steered the development of the system and forged the relationship with Bruker BioSpin. Deputy Director of the CMR Dr Ian Brereton, who is a Director of SPIN Systems Queensland, acted as the project sponsor on behalf of SPIN Systems Queensland, which will sell the equipment.
Bruker BioSpin has been a long-time collaborative partner of the CMR. This partnership resulted in them jointly receiving the prestigious Australian Business and Higher Education Round Table (BHERT) award for outstanding international collaborative R&D in 1999.
Media: For further information, contact Mr Wolfgang Roffmann (telephone 07 3010 3150), Dr Steve Wilson (telephone 07 3365 4449) or Dr Ian Brereton (telephone 07 3365 4245).
