Facilities & Equipment

The facilities and equipment are listed in their physical locations below, but these are core facilities and are accessible to all the imaging researchers in London. Facility abbrevations are listed at the bottom of the page.

Computed Tomography (CT)

Description Location
GE Healthcare Discovery CT 750 HD (high resolution, dual energy 64-slice CT scanner) Lawson
GE VCT 64-slice CT scanner (2) LHSC
GE Light Speed Plus CT Scanner LHSC
GE OX Ultra CT Scanner LHSC
Medtronic “O-arm” portable cone-beam CT scanner Robarts
CSCT (coherent scatter computed tomography unit) (2) Robarts
GE eXplore Locus Ultra - micro-CT system for whole body mouse in 16 seconds with a resolution of 180 μm Robarts
GE eXplore Locus Live animal micro-CT scanner Robarts
GE eXplore Locus SP - Ex vivo specimen micro-CT scanner with isotropic resolution of 10μm Robarts
GE eXplore CT 120 - live animal micro CT scanner capable of gated CT imaging Robarts
Megavoltage CT scanner (on tomotherapy unit) LRCP
Cone-Beam CT scanner (on linacs) LRCP
GE Revolution 256 slice CT scanner Lawson

Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)

Description Location
SPECT/CT (4) Lawson
LHSC
SJHC
SPECT (12) LHSC
SJHC
GE MicroSPECT/CT Robarts

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

Description Location
3T PET/MRI (Siemens BIOGRAPH mMR) with a range of 32-channle head and cardiac RF arrays, PET-compatible head and body RF arrays, multinuclear RF coils, fMRI support equipment, MR-compatible EEG system and pre-clinical imaging capabilities  Lawson
GE Healthcare Discovery VCT PET/CT scanner Lawson
Cubresa NuPET MR-compatible PET insert for small animal 3T PET/MRI Lawson
Siemens Inveon small animal PET system Lawson
GE eXplore VISTA small animal PET system Lawson
VPixx TrackPixx PET/MRI-compatible eye tracker (installed at Lawson 3.0 Tesla PET/MRI facility) Lawson
Swisstrace Twilite MR-compatible PET blood sampling system Lawson
Preclinical PET/3T MRI system ImPaKT

Magnetic Resonance (MR)

Description Location
1.5T MRI (5 total - SJHC [2], UH [1], VH [2]) SJHC
LHSC
3T PET/MRI (Siemens BIOGRAPH mMR) with a range of 32-channle head and cardiac RF arrays, PET-compatible head and body RF arrays, multinuclear RF coils, fMRI support equipment, MR-compatible EEG system and pre-clinical imaging capabilities  Lawson
3-T Siemens Prisma 64 channel whole body MRI with full neuro and MSK RF coil sets Robarts
3-Tesla GE 750 MR whole body imager Robarts
7-T Siemens Magnetom Step 2.3, 8 channel transmit/32 channel receive human head MRI Robarts
9.4-Tesla 31cm bore Varian animal MR imager with a range of rf coils Robarts
Low field (up to 0.1T) animal MR imaging system Robarts
Turn-key helium Helispin polarizer/polarimeter units for respiratory MR imaging (2) Robarts
Clinical 129-xenon polarizers (2)

Robarts  SJHC

HyperSense 13C DNP Polarizer (Oxford Instruments) Robarts
VIDA Diagnostics PW2 workstation Robarts
Stelar Spinmaster FFC2000 1T C/DC Relaxometer (0 to 1T) for nuclear magnetic resonance dispersion measurement Robarts
Stelar MRIn Relaxometer (± 0.25T around field strength of a clinical scanner) for nuclear magnetic resonance dispersion measurement) Robarts
3T MR Solutions ImPaKt

Magnetic Field Exposure Facilities for Bioelectromagnetics (BEMS)

Description Location
Animal exposure (2 systems, one within animal care facility) Lawson
Human MF exposure (3 systems, 80 mT head-only vertical, 80 mT local/cortical, 100 mT local/vestibular Lawson
NeuroElectrics Starstim tDCS-tACS system Lawson
One single pulse Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Lawson
Human magnetic field shielded facility Lawson
MF Shielded and sham-MR Shielded enclosures Lawson
Electroencephalography facilities Lawson
128 Channel fMRI/EEG system Lawson
Two 64 Channel EEG/ERP systems Lawson
Two 32 Channel Ambulatory EEG systems and 16 Channel EEG system Lawson
Neurophysiological testing facilities and Neurosensory analyzer Lawson
Two 16 channel Polhemus Ambulatory Position Monitoring Systems Lawson
Micro Laser Sensor - Finger Tremor Monitor Lawson
Force Plate Postural Sway Monitor, and Temp, Skin Resistance, Environmental Monitors Lawson
Vestibular Lab including an Vestibular Chair from Interaccoustics and a Gaitlab from BTS Lawson

Cyclotron and Radiochemistry

Description Location
GE PETtrace 8 cyclotron (16.5 MeV) Lawson
Comecer hot cell chambers (11) Lawson
ARTMS high current solid target station, transfer system and target processing Lawson
GE FASTlab synthesizer units (3) Lawson
GE TRACERlab synthesizer units (3) Lawson
Neptis Perform synthesizer unit Lawson
Synthra synthesizer unit Lawson
GMP facilities with production area, clean room and QC area Lawson
Shipping room Lawson
Digital multi-isotope autoradiographic system, sample holders, compression plate, work station and flat panel, Beavacq tuning sets Lawson
Medicinal Chemistry Laboratory for the design and synthesis of receptor-targeting chemical entities, automated solid-phase synthesis, purification and characterization of imaging probes. LRCP
Radiochemistry Laboratory used in the preparation of novel molecular imaging probes. Radiolabelling of small molecules, peptides and larger biomolecules for SPECT and PET imaging for human and small animal imaging LRCP

Optical Imaging

Description Location
Steroscopic particle image velocimetry (PIV) and flow visualization system Western
(Physics)
Bioluminescence/fluorescence whole animal scanners Robarts
IVIS Lumina XRMS scanner Robarts
2-photon confocal microscope ImPaKT
IVIS Spectrum CT ImPaKT
Multi-channel near infrared (NIR) intravital spinning disk confocal microscope for imaging of human cancer in small animal models VRL
Olympus FluoViewTM FV1000 Confocal Imaging System built on the IX81 Motorized Inverted System Microscope (IX2 Series) platform                                                                                o Imaging laser lines: 405/458/488/515/559/635 nm. 10X, 20X, 40, 60X oil, 100X oil. Epifluorescence and DIC (Nomarski) illumination
o Support infrastructure for live imaging: maintaining desired CO2 level and temperature during live imaging; drug perfusion system with perfusion chambers for cultured cells and embryos
o Image analysis workstation for analysis of confocal images with software: Image-Pro Analyzer (version 6.2, Media Cybernetics) and FV 10-ASW 1.6 (FluoView 1000 software, Olympus corporation)
VRL
LaVision Picostar gated camera system Lawson
Continuum Surelite pulsed lasers with visible and NIR OPO tunability Lawson
Opotek Rainbow NIR tunable pulsed laser Lawson
Polaris 1064nm Nd:Yag pulsed laser Lawson
Multimagnetics 64 channel parallel data acquistion systems Lawson
P&P Optica imaging spectrometers Lawson
Commercial (Olympus) and custom ultrasound transducer arrays Lawson
Beckman and PTI analytical absorbance/fluorescence/luminescence spectrometers Lawson
Photometrics and Roper scientific EMCCD and CCD camer systems Lawson
Nikon A1R confocal microscope and anaylsis workstation Lawson
GE eXplore Optix small animal fluorescent imager LRCP
Optical CT scanners (dosimetry and education) Robarts

Ultrasound

Description Location
Diagnostic ultrasound machines (10) Robarts
3D ultrasound imaging systems for vascular diseases, prostate and breast cancer research (6) Robarts
Research enabled Ultrasonix Ultrasound machines (2) Robarts
Research enabled Ultrasonix Ultrasound machine Physics
VisualSonics micro-ultrasound imaging and Doppler blood flow facility with a resolution of 60μm (2) Robarts
VisualSonics micro-ultrasound imaging for detection and assessment of growth and treatment of primary and metastatic tumours in animal models VRL
Resonant Ultrasound Image Guidance Systems (3) LRCP
Varian Sonoray Ultrasound Image Guidance Systems (2) LRCP
Phillips IU-22 diagnostic ultrasound (2) SPARC
Philips iE-33 3-D trans-esophogeal ultrasound Robarts
Spencer transcranial Doppler machine SPARC
FUS instrument focused ultrasound unit Lawson

Electroencephalography (EEG)

Description Location
3-bedroom sleep laboratory equipped with three 32-channel Embla Titanium ambulatory/in-lab EEG systems for polysomnography BMI
32-channel Embla Titanium ambulatory/portable EEG systems for polysomnography BMI
64-channel brain products MR-compatible EEG system and 16-channel MR-compatible bipolar system for polysomnography BMI
129-channel Electrical Geodesics Inc (EGI) EEG system BMI
MRI-compatible 129-channel EGI EEG system BMI
EGI photogrammetry system for electrode co-registration BMI
64-channel Biosemi ActiveTwo EEG system BMI
16-channel gtec gUSBamp EEG system BMI
128-channel fMRI/EEG system Lawson
64-channel EEG/ERP system (2) Lawson
32-channel ambulatory EEG system and 16-channel EEG system (2) Lawson

Imaging analysis hardware and software

Description Location
Neuroimaging analysis CPU/GPU cluster (256 cores; 32TB of storage) BMI
Cloud-based CPU/GPU neuroimaging cluster with limitlessly-scalable number of compute nodes and storage (evaluated to 900 cores and 20TB, winner of 2013 Human Brain Mapping Hackathon Challenge) BMI
Founding partner in SharcNET BMI
fMRI, diffusion imaging, morphometry analysis software Western
(Computer Science)
Our parallel computing automatic analysis pipeline software, currently also in use and under development at multiple sites internationally (UK, US, Netherlands, Hungary; www.github.com/rhodricusack/automaticanalysis) BMI
Real-time imaging analysis and quality assurance system (64 local cores, streams data to an IBM cloud supercomputer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F87rB0c6Is) BMI
BrainVoyagerQX license (20) BMI
Matlab unlimited-seat site license with all toolboxes Western

Other Facilities

Description Location
Fully equipped Prototyping Facility including CAD/CAM design programs (RhinoCad, AutoCad, EdgeCam) to build digital and analog circui7ts. Lawson
Fully equpped Rapid Prototyping facility with 3D scanning, CNC mills and 3D printers Lawson
High Purity Germanium (HPGe) Well Counter Lawson
3D Printer (Plastic Rapid prototyping facility) Robarts
Cryoviz - 3D high resolution small animal digital cryotome Robarts
Selective laser melting system (3D Systems DM125) (first in Canada) Robarts
Measuring microscope - Olympus MM400 Robarts
Material testing equipment (Instron 3343) Robarts
Fully equipped machine shop with two NC mills Robarts
Electronic, RF coil, and gradient coil shops for building prototypes Robarts
Autostereoscopic 3D display system Robarts
Stereoscopic Laparoscopic system Robarts
3D Histology workstations Robarts
Optics lab with in vivo confocal and intrinsic signal optical microscopes Robarts
Optical and magnetic tracking equipment and haptic controllers for surgical and therapy guidance Robarts
Augmented reality workstations (2) Robarts
Simulated High Altitude Chamber with neurobehavioral and cognitive test batteries Lawson
Momentum MPI (Magnetic Particle Imaging) Robarts
Shadow shield whole body counter with a motorized bed and using an array of 3- 3” NaI detectors plus 1- HPGe 85mm x 32.6mm coaxial detector. Lawson
Fully equipped digital histology room with surgical suite for small animals, Leica ASP300 Tissue Processor, Leica Microtome RM2235, Zeiss Histological Imaging Microscope with Nikon Digital Camera DXM1200 and America Optical Histostat Tissue Embedder (Paraffin) Western
(Medical Biophysics)
Magstim Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator BMI
Polaris infrared motion-tracking camera (Northern Digital, Waterloo, Canada) with Brainsight frameless stereotaxic software (Rogue Research, Montreal, Canada) BMI
Fourier transform profilometer (Opton Co, Seto, Aichi, Japan) Western
(Fac. Science)
ERG - electroretinography: Diagnosis Colordome (Espion) Western
(Fac. Science)
Ocular Coherence Tomography [OCT] Zeiss Visante OCT Anterior segment imaging Western
(Fac. Science)
Spectralis OCT Western
(Fac. Science)

Locations

BMI: Brain & Mind Institute

ImPaKt: Imaging Pathogens for Knowledge Translation Facility

Lawson: Lawson Health Research Institute

LHSC: London Health Sciences Centre

LRCP: London Regional Cancer Program

Robarts: Robarts Research Institute

SJHC: St. Joseph's Health Care London

SPARC: Stroke Prevention & Atherosclerosis Research Centre

VRL: Victoria Research Laboratories