Our technology is pivotal to a translation research program. If you think about cellular assays or protein assays, cells and proteins in a mouse aren't necessarily the same type in a human. But in imaging, a mouse brain has the same contrast mechanism that the human brain does in an MRI, the structures are just in different places. By size, any mouse organ is a thousand fold smaller, and blood flow is 6-8 times faster. You can image a human prostate dynamically and you can get a frame every minute to a minute in a half and watch the blood flow curve and see enough resolution to basically see areas in the prostate that might be a tumor. In a mouse you have 10 seconds to see that, and the size of the prostate of a mouse is so much smaller so it's really tricky to do.

Novel biomarkers are in an accelerated state of development and Bruker is bringing many of our technologies into the aid of these efforts. Our optical imaging systems are very user friendly and easy to adopt for a wide range of laboratories. Our PET and SPECT systems provide exceptional performance while being very straight forward to own and operate. We are also bringing more compact MRI systems into the market with our ICON, which can perform some applications as good as our other products and even offer some advantages with certain contrast agents.

DMN: What's unique about the technology you use?
MB: In our MRIs, bigger magnets will produce better images. In a human MRI, 7T is a cutting edge magnet but that's just the beginning of what most higher-end systems start at for animals. We can readily go up from there. But a high field strength MRI also has to be a manageable system in order to deliver consistent results. We have a growing number of magnets in the 11.7T and 15T category which operate on our same Ultra Shielded and Refrigerated technology as most of our other systems. The users do not have to think as much about the magnet and rather can concentrate on running the system and generating data. This ease of ownership translates back to the other end of the product line where our ICON MRI system is a cryogen free permanent magnet with virtually no maintenance and minimal siting concerns.

In our Albira PET system, we use a brand new and proprietary continuous crystal design in conjunction with our cutting edge detector system. This design allows for more sophisticated detection of PET tracers with depth of interaction base reconstruction algorithms to enhance the accuracy of the detection of the PET signal.

DMN: What else can you say about advances in technology?
MB: We are working with Philips on a new technology being developed called Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI). We have the license to their methodology for all preclinical uses and we are in the middle of building and commercializing an animal specific magnetic particle imaging scanner. This technology is similar to MRI but with no background tissue image -- all you get is an image directly related to how much magnetic particle there is in a voxel. So you can now put that in the blood or label things with it and watch where that goes in the body. There are of course indications for cardiovascular imaging. Bruker is developing a technology that will work well for these cardiovascular applications, but in the animal world, we have researchers who want to develop specific markers and tags in other areas as well. We are excited about entering that field as well.

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