A Scottish team at the University of Edinburgh designed a 10-year sustainability model for preclinical imaging facilities that addresses financial planning, staff retention, equipment maintenance, and data management to ensure long-term viability with an initial investment of one million pounds.
- The Scottish proposal combines PET/SPECT, CT, MRI, and ultrasound technologies supported by four full-time staff members including a facility head, imaging scientists, and a chemist.
- The financial model projects scanner use increasing from 40% initially to 90% once protocols and workflows are established.
- Staff retention strategies include career development support, training, conference participation, and interactive manuals to maintain imaging expertise.
- Environmental sustainability measures include batching scans, minimizing MRI cryogen loss, and implementing FAIR data principles for findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable datasets.
- The proposal uses full-service equipment contracts linked to scanner downtime to reduce unexpected costs and interruptions.
How can biomedical imaging facilities become more sustainable while continuing to deliver scientifically excellent research? Sustainability can extend far beyond environmental considerations to include business planning, infrastructure development, workforce capacity, equipment maintenance, and data management, as a webinar shows.
A Scottish team presented a theoretical 10-year sustainability model for a multimodal preclinical PET/MRI/CT/ultrasound facility. The proposal was one of three winning approaches presented during the Global BioImaging webinar on July 22 and highlighted by Euro-BioImaging.
The Nigerian team, focusing on a clinical hospital setting, outlined an AI-supported equipment retrofit and equipment-as-a-service model, while the Australian team proposed a 10-year financial sustainability plan for a preclinical imaging facility.
The Sustainathon challenged participants to design a biomedical imaging facility that could remain self-sustaining for at least 10 years with an initial investment of $1 million. The theoretical exercise considered financial, environmental, operational, workforce, infrastructure, and data-related sustainability.
Protecting scanners, staff, and data
Aishwarya Mishra, PhD, presents the Scottish team's proposal for a sustainable multimodal preclinical imaging facility. Image courtesy of the Global BioImaging webinar.Image courtesy of the Global BioImaging webinar/ The University of Edinburgh
Dr. Aishwarya Mishra, deputy manager of the Preclinical PET Imaging Facility at the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland, presented the Scottish proposal.
The hypothetical facility would combine PET or SPECT and CT with MRI and ultrasound. It would be supported by four full-time staff: a facility head, two imaging scientists, and a radiochemist or contrast-agent chemist. For its UK-based model, the team calculated the plan using an initial investment of £1 million rather than the challenge’s original $1 million.
The team identified long-term income, scanner maintenance and upgrades, staff retention, changing research priorities, and the need for reproducible, reusable, and shareable datasets as central challenges facing preclinical imaging facilities.
The University of Edinburgh's 10-year financial model demonstrates how long-term planning can support sustainable biomedical imaging facilities. Image courtesy of the Global BioImaging webinar./ The University of Edinburgh
Its financial plan projected that scanner use could rise from around 40% during the facility’s initial development to almost 90% once protocols, quality-control procedures, and workflows were established.
The model ring-fenced funding for essential equipment maintenance and proposed full-service contracts linked to scanner downtime to reduce interruptions and unexpected costs. Daily and weekly quality-control protocols and standard operating procedures would also help maintain performance and reduce variation when personnel change.
Future scanner replacements would depend on infrastructure grants from bodies including UK Research and Innovation, the European Research Council, and charitable funders.
Retaining trained staff and tiered data storage
Mishra emphasized that retaining trained staff is essential because imaging expertise cannot be separated from the people who hold it. The proposal included career-development support, training, conference participation, site visits, and interactive manuals for new staff and users.
Environmental measures included batching scans, shutting down equipment when possible, minimizing MRI cryogen loss, scheduling computing-intensive tasks during periods of lower energy demand, separating radioactive and nonradioactive waste, reducing solvents and single-use plastics, and asking suppliers to take back older equipment for recycling.
The team also proposed tiered data storage guided by FAIR principles, meaning that data should be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. Recent studies would remain in active storage, older raw data would be compressed but accessible, and long-term material would be archived.
Standardized metadata and secure, auditable access could support reproducible multicenter studies and the creation of a long-term preclinical imaging data bank.
Different models for different settings
The Nigerian team presented a model for a clinical imaging facility at the University College Hospital and University of Ibadan. It proposed upgrading existing CT and ultrasound systems rather than replacing them, installing a solar microgrid, and obtaining a low-field, helium-free MRI system through an equipment-as-a-service agreement.
The model also incorporated edge AI and federated learning to reduce dependence on continuous internet access and support the inclusion of African imaging data in AI development.
The Australian proposal described a hypothetical nonprofit, tiered fee-for-service preclinical imaging facility supported by a 40% host-institution subsidy. It would offer commercial partners multiyear packages, use several revenue streams, invest in staff development and data infrastructure, and increase fees annually to account for inflation.
The Global BioImaging Biomedical Imaging Working Group now plans to use the Sustainathon proposals as the basis for a community recommendations paper. Members of the Euro-BioImaging community are already participating, and additional imaging professionals are being invited to contribute.
