Multi-million pound MRI facility opened at Glenfield Hospital

The new scanner will help expand research into heart and circulatory diseases.

Currently researchers in Leicester are able to scan 500 cardiovascular research participants a year. The new facility will increase this to 1500 and allow for new research with capabilities only available in a handful of centres across the UK.

The new scanner facility has been funded by a £1 million grant from the British Heart Foundation (BHF). It will be jointly owned by Leicester’s Hospitals, which has dedicated £2.1 million to the facility, and the University of Leicester.

The joint ownership of the facility will allow for improved patient clinical care as well as increasing capacity for cardiovascular research for both the University of Leicester and the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Leicester Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) - a partnership between Leicester’s Hospitals, the University of Leicester and Loughborough University.

Rebecca Brown, acting chief executive at Leicester’s Hospitals explained: “We’re so proud to work with the British Heart Foundation and the University of Leicester to bring this new facility into the hospital.

“These scanners will be part of our hospital in daily use, which will increase the availability of scans and speed up the process for our patients who need them, both by increased number of MRI scanner available, and by the improvement in technology that the new facility provides.”  

 “We will also be able to offer more opportunities for people to take part in research locally, which will lead to improved care for our community in the future.”

The launch of the new MRI scanner facility builds on the successes of cardiovascular research in Leicester. The imaging team have secured over £9M in external grants and published over 100 papers in the last five years, influenced guideline changes for coronary artery disease, and have been the largest recruiter for a study intro multi-organ imaging for COVID-19.