France Life Imaging

Comprising 6 regional imaging platform hubs for medical research when it was set up in 2012, the French research infrastructure France Life Imaging, FLI, extended the regional coverage of imaging platforms from 2020, integrating 3 new regional hubs in 2020, thus bringing together 40 research platforms and 162 in vivo imaging systems. A thematic hub for image analysis and management (IAM) completes the network of platforms. This structure is also complemented by 4 networks of expertise (NE) in 4 domains, critical for medical imaging (molecular imaging agents, innovative technologies, interventional imaging, multimodal image processing) and a training network. Based on its equipment and expertise, each hub brings its own specialty, which together, constitute a national facility driving future development and advances in imaging. The main results as the followed ones:

• The number of projects carried out on the platforms equipement has risen from 863 in 2021 to 986 in 2022 and 1099 in 2023. 60% to 70% of the projects were research collaborations with a partner outside the laboratory affiliated to the platform. Private (~ 20%) or public (50%) funds financed them.
• FLI raised ~13 M€ in co-financing mainly from the call for proposal for equiupment "Contrat Plan Etat Région 2020-2027", over the period 2020-2023, complemented by 10M€ granted on France 2030 Innovation Santé call in 2023.
• Since 2012, 191 starting grants have been awarded to foster collaborations and exchanges of know-hows for a total of 3,75M€, including 95 grants awarded since 2020
• More than 900 young scientists were supported by FLI to participate to a confress or a training program during the last year.

Several areas of medical and health research are undergoing major developments with an impact at several levels: imaging systems, acquisition protocols and data analysis. Maintaining a network of platforms and affiliated laboratories in medical imaging is an asset for for effectively addressing the challenges.