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Imaging

Imaging makes it possible to see living matter at every scale, from the single molecule to the whole brain. Cutting-edge microscopy, quantitative image analysis and medical imaging make it a pillar of research, where observation becomes measurement.

Inovarion’s imaging know-how is largely carried by digital pathology. The laboratory took part in validating the Immunoscore — an automated, image-analysis quantification of the CD3+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes infiltrating the tumour on immunohistochemical slides — now a reference prognostic and predictive biomarker in oncology. Inovarion also deploys microscopy in all its forms (confocal, fluorescence, super-resolution), immunofluorescence and quantitative immunohistochemistry, as well as resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) for mapping brain connectivity. More targeted techniques — tomography, nanoparticle tracking analysis, time-lapse tracking — complete the range according to project needs.

These methods serve very diverse questions. In oncology, digital pathology underpins the Immunoscore and the analysis of the tumour immune microenvironment, across many sites. In neuroscience, resting-state functional MRI made it possible to map the organisation and connectivity of the brain — amygdala–prefrontal cortex networks[2], organisation of the cingulate cortex[3] — in the non-human primate and in humans, work published in journals such as Brain and Communications Biology. In cell biology, confocal microscopy and immunofluorescence visualise molecular localisations and dynamics; in reproductive medicine, immunofluorescence localised the AhR receptor in the human placenta[11].

Imaging thus sits at the intersection of observation and quantification: the Immunoscore, in particular, combines imaging and bioinformatics to turn a histological slide into standardised, reproducible numerical data.

See also: Immunohistochemistry & multiplex immunofluorescence ; Imaging & quantitative microscopy.

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Representative publications

  1. Verstraete et al. The prefrontal operculum, a human-specific hub for the cognitive control of speech. Commun Biol, 2025. PubMed
  2. Giacometti et al. Differential functional organization of amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex networks in macaque and human. Commun Biol, 2024. Record → · PubMed
  3. Ducret et al. Medial to lateral frontal functional connectivity mapping reveals the organization of cingulate cortex. Cereb Cortex, 2024. Record → · PubMed
  4. Maujean et al. Hetero-Diels-Alder and CuAAC Click Reactions for Fluorine-18 Labeling of Peptides: Automation and Comparative Study of the Two Methods. Molecules, 2024. Record → · PubMed
  5. Mlecnik et al. Multicenter International Study of the Consensus Immunoscore for the Prediction of Relapse and Survival in Early-Stage Colon Cancer. Cancers (Basel), 2023. Record → · PubMed
  6. Besse et al. Protocol for automated multivariate quantitative-image-based cytometry analysis by fluorescence microscopy of asynchronous adherent cells. STAR Protoc, 2023. Record → · PubMed
  7. Willis et al. Multi-Institutional Evaluation of Pathologists’ Assessment Compared to Immunoscore. Cancers (Basel), 2023. Record → · PubMed
  8. Mlecnik et al. Multicenter International Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer Study of the Consensus Immunoscore for the Prediction of Survival and Response to Chemotherapy in Stage III Colon Cancer. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2020. Record → · PubMed
  9. Eynde et al. The Link between the Multiverse of Immune Microenvironments in Metastases and the Survival of Colorectal Cancer Patients. Cancer Cell, 2018. Record → · PubMed
  10. Angelova et al. Evolution of Metastases in Space and Time under Immune Selection. Cell, 2018. Record → · PubMed
  11. Degrelle et al. Cerium dioxide nanoparticles coated with benzo[a]pyrene modify aryl hydrocarbon receptor activity, trophoblast differentiation and mitochondrial network phenotype in human placenta. Part Fibre Toxicol, 2025. PubMed