Scannexus and AMRA partnership: Ultra-High-MR imaging to shed light on metabolic diseases

05 Oct 2017 --- AMRA, an international leader in body composition analysis, is to partner with Scannexus, a world-leading Ultra High-Field MRI scanner facility located at the Brightlands Maastricht Health Campus. The partnership was confirmed with official signatures of the collaboration agreement and a full-day AMRA introduction seminar to the Brightlands Maastricht Health Community.

By partnering, Scannexus and AMRA will be able to offer something new to the research community: the ability to translate a 6-minute whole body MRI scan into precise, 3D-volumetric fat and muscle measurements using scanners at Scannexus. According to a press release from Brightlands Maastricht Health Campus, the AMRA Profiler Researcher makes it possible to understand metabolic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes.

Ultra-High-MR imaging provides new levels of insights into human anatomy and function, opening up a range of possibilities with implications for medical diagnosis and treatment. Using AMRA’s tool, AMRA Profiler Research, researchers can now quantitatively measure fat and muscle tissue content using the same MRI scanners.

“The collaboration with Scannexus would bring AMRA, a research-based company, closer to the center of excellence in Human Biology, NUTRIM and other clinics at Maastricht UMC+ and in the Netherlands. This would add to the understanding of body composition and risk profiling of metabolic diseases,” Tommy Johansson, CEO of AMRA (Advanced MR Analytics AB), said during the signing in Maastricht.

Scannexus’ CEO, Albert Scherpbier, responded that the bundling of strengths will allow them to open up a new market.

“The partnership with AMRA makes it possible to get scan results produced at Scannexus and Maastricht UMC+ to researchers much faster. Researchers now have one point of contact for assistance with their research.”

Speaking on the nutraceutical implications of this partnership, Iris van Brandenburg, Maastricht Health Campus Marketing & Communication Manager, tells NutritionInsight that: “Nutraceuticals, of course, is a broad umbrella term, but anytime you are looking at an intervention that provides a possible health benefit, you want to understand exactly what that benefit is, the mechanism for how that benefit occurs, and which changes might be broad across a population versus only related to specific individuals.”

“To be able to understand such factors, you need accurate and precise measurements of the body, as well as an individualized understanding of metabolic status before and after the intervention.”

“The nutraceutical arena is an area of interest in the same way that pharmaceuticals, dietary and exercise interventions are. If you have the ability to precisely measure an individual's fat and muscle compartments and to precisely detect small changes in those compartments based upon a specific intervention, you can therefore better understand each individual at baseline and also provide early characterization of efficacy or benefit of the intervention,” Brandenburg concludes.

By Lucy Gunn

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