NVision Imaging Technologies GmbH has announced a long-term strategic partnership with the University of Cambridge’s Department of Radiology to establish its first European research center for the POLARIS™ metabolic imaging platform. The collaboration aims to create a translational research pipeline for quantum-enhanced MRI, moving advanced metabolic diagnostics from the laboratory to clinical settings. The Cambridge team, led by Professor Ferdia Gallagher, will utilize the system to identify early metabolic biomarkers for liver cancer, multiple sclerosis (MS), and cardiovascular diseases, potentially allowing clinicians to assess therapy effectiveness within days rather than months.
The POLARIS platform leverages parahydrogen-induced polarization (PHIP)—a quantum physics-based technique—to boost the MRI signal of metabolic agents (such as sugars) by over 10,000x. This enhancement enables standard MRI systems to visualize and measure cell metabolism in real-time. Unlike traditional metabolic imaging, which can be slow or require radioactive tracers, the PHIP-based polarizer produces imaging agents in under three minutes. This high-throughput capability is designed to detect “metabolic fingerprints” of aggressive diseases and early tumor formation before structural changes become visible on conventional scans.
This deployment follows NVision’s 2025 collaborations with institutions such as Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and marks a shift toward integrating quantum hardware into established clinical research workflows. Headquartered in Ulm, Germany, NVision plans to initiate multi-center clinical studies in 2027. By establishing robust metabolic biomarkers, the partnership at Cambridge seeks to accelerate decision-making in drug development and provide a functional readout of tissue biology that current structural MRI cannot achieve.
For further technical details on the POLARIS platform and its clinical applications, consult the official announcement via EQS News here.
March 3, 2026
