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Medical Science Technology

The Department of Energy's Life and Medical Science Division (LMSD) supports fundamental research and technology development in medicine, particularly in the fields of nuclear medicine, imaging sciences, and neurosciences. LMSD uses the extraordinary expertise of DOE national laboratories in developing highly advanced instrumentation to provide new solutions to medical challenges.

Research Goals

LMSD uses current advances in science and technology to develop innovative diagnostic and treatment solutions for application to critical problems in human health. DOE is uniquely capable of advanced technological solutions to medical problems because of its expertise in the physical sciences, particularly in physics, chemistry, engineering, and the computational sciences.

Research in Progress

Advanced Instrumentation Technology supports multidisciplinary, multi-institutional projects that address high-risk medical instrumentation technology problems. The research ultimately will lead to the development of medical instruments and techniques that can be transferred to the National Institutes of Health or industry for further development. Recent research has focused in three areas.

• Artificial Retina — Research to develop an implantable microelectronic retinal device that restores useful vision to people blinded by retinal diseases.
• Awake Animal Imaging Instrumentation — Research will create scanners to image biochemical processes in the body even when the patient is moving.
• RatCAP: Conscious Animal Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
• MicroCAT: Restraint-Free Animal Imaging
• Adapting Astronomy to Ophthalomology — Optics used in astronomy are helping scientists discover new ways to diagnose eye diseases and correct vision. [Completed]
• Previous projects

Medical Imaging Instrumentation supports research projects to provide accurate and clear images of biochemical activities by developing sensitive detectors and scanning equipment and the advanced data-acquisition and image-processing methods necessary to support these next-generation detectors.

• Nuclear Medicine Instrumentation — positron emission tomography (PET) and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scanners
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Instrumentation

Research Legacy

Molecular Nuclear Medicine, a legacy of DOE research, has made it possible for today's doctors to rely on nuclear medicine to care for patients. Nuclear medicine truly helps patients everywhere in healthcare.

The current programs of LMSD are an outgrowth and logical extension of the original charge of the Atomic Energy Commission “to exploit nuclear energy to promote human health.” From the production of a few medically important radioisotopes to the development of production methods for radiopharmaceuticals used in standard diagnostic tests for millions of patients throughout the world to the development of ultrasensitive diagnostic instruments (e.g., the PET scanner), the DOE medical sciences program leads progress in the field on nuclear medicine. Today, the LMSD program has incorporated recent developments in radiochemistry, genomic sciences, and structural biology to usher in a new era in mapping the human brain and is using highly specific radiotracers and instruments to more precisely diagnose neuropsychiatric illnesses and cancer.