Instituto de Biofísica e Engenharia Biomédica

20/03/2026

📢 From April 19 to 22, 2026, IBEB and FCUL will host a scientific event of excellence: the ESTRO course "Quantitative Methods in Radiation Oncology – Evidence Based Radiation Oncology in the 2020's". The initiative results from a partnership between ESTRO, the Portuguese Association of Medical Physics (ApFisMed), IBEB and the Physics Department of FCUL.

🗣️ The course will be directed by Prof. Søren Bentzen, from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (USA), a world-renowned researcher in the field of radiation oncology and evidence-based clinical research.

✨ Aimed at medical physicists, biologists, physicians, radiotherapy technicians and PhD students, this intensive course aims to introduce the attendees to a range of quantitative methods that are frequently used in radiation oncology research and, in some cases, clinical decision support tools. Radiation oncology probably has the most solid quantitative foundation among medical specialties. As in other specialties, results of randomized controlled trials form the basis for evidence-based treatment guidelines; but in addition, prognostic and predictive models provide clinical decision support for individualized management of cases.

🔗 More information in https://www.estro.org/Courses/2026/Quantitative-Methods-in-Radiation-Oncology

26/02/2026

26/02/2026

👏 Ana Margarida Mota, researcher at IBEB and Assistant Professor at FCUL, has secured advanced computing resources as principal investigator for the project “Experimental Evaluation of GPU-Based Deep Learning Workflows for Mammography and Digital Breast Tomosynthesis Analysis”, selected under the Advanced Computing Projects (6th edition – A0, Round B) Call by FCT.

✨ The six-month allocation of advanced computational resources will support the experimental evaluation of GPU-based deep learning pipelines for mammography and digital breast tomosynthesis, contributing to her research in AI-driven breast imaging.

18/02/2026

👏 The paper “Targeting Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: A Special Focus on Phototherapy and Nanomaterials” was recently published in the journal Molecules.

✨ This work was developed by a PhD student under the supervision of IBEB full member João Coelho, in collaboration with Prof. Catarina Reis and Dr. Manuela Gaspar from the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon (FFUL).

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype of breast cancer lacking estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors. This characteristic limits the effectiveness of hormonal and targeted therapies, and despite advances in chemotherapy (ChT), radio therapy (RT), surgery, targeted therapy (TT) and immunotherapy (IT), clinical outcomes remain poor, highlighting an urgent need for new therapeutic strategies. The development of advanced nanotechnology-based strategies has opened new avenues for the diagnosis and therapy of TNBC. This review focuses on photothermal therapy (PTT) combined with nanotechnology-based strategies. As this innovative approach progresses toward clinical application, future studies and trials will be crucial in determining its potential for TNBC management and improving patient outcomes.



🔗 Read more at https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules31030511

17/02/2026

✨ In December 2025, the Soroptimist Club in Lisbon selected Raquel Conceição for the Award Dr. Maria de Lourdes Bettencourt - Edition 2025, for her scientific contribution to women's healthcare, namely in the area of microwave imaging for breast cancer screening. The award was given on the 16th of December 2025 in Lisbon during the monthly club's meeting, with a presentation to follow later in January 2026.

12/02/2026

👏 Ana Margarida Mota, Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and researcher at the Institute of Biophysics and Biomedical Engineering (IBEB), has been awarded the Diagnostics Travel Award 2026, granted by the scientific journal Diagnostics (MDPI). The award supports her participation in the 18th International Workshop on Breast Imaging (IWBI 2026), to be held in Greece, and recognizes her contributions to medical imaging and artificial intelligence applied to breast cancer.

29/01/2026

👏 PhD student João Mendes, and full members of IBEB Prof. Ana M. Mota and Prof. Nuno Matela have published new research on using AI to differentiate breast lesions with very similar radiological appearance. A key highlight of this work is the implementation of Explainable AI (XAI), ensuring transparency and providing clinicians with a clearer understanding of the AI’s decision-making process.

✨ Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive molecular subtype of breast cancer (BC). TNBC lacks targeted treatment options, which results in poor clinical outcomes. TNBC lesions usually present benign characteristics on mammograms, complicating their early diagnosis. This retrospective multicenter study presents a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to distinguish TNBC from benign lesions on 566 mammograms (277 benign/289 TNBC), acquired at three different institutions across the UK. Each mammogram had its quality enhanced using a combination of total variation minimization filtering and contrast local adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE). The proposed model achieved a test set AUC of 0.984, with a sensitivity and specificity of 94.2% and 91.9%, respectively. Explainability with GRAD-CAM was applied to the test set, revealing that the model was using not only lesion characteristics but also tumor microenvironment regions to make predictions. The same test set was analyzed by an expert radiologist who achieved a sensitivity of 71% and a specificity of 60%. The comparison of results between the developed model and the expert radiologist highlights the model’s performance and underscores its potential as a complementary diagnostic tool. This model might help in the task of TNBC early diagnosis, potentially diminishing the number of false negatives.

🔗 Read more at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11547-025-02157-x

06/01/2026

👏 Researcher Daniela Godinho has had her project “Multimodal Deep Learning Approaches for Predicting Treatment Response in Breast Cancer”, in collaboration with Inês Prata Machado from the University of Cambridge, approved under the 6th Advanced Computing Projects Call – A0 (Lot A). This project will grant access to advanced computational infrastructure for six months.

05/01/2026

🌟 We are organising a "Training school on management of technology transfer" with University of Galway. The school will take place at IBEB from 14th of 16th of January 2026. Anyone from FCiências. ID/CIÊNCIAS-ULISBOA, Politecnico di Torino (POLITO) or University of Galway (GALWAY) can attend (FC. ID in-person and POLITO/GALWAY online).
👉 Find more details in the publication below.

🌟 In the context of the "3BAtwin" project, University of Galway (GALWAY) is organising a "Training school on management of technology transfer" for FCiências. ID/Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa administration staff, project managers and researchers from 14th to 16th of January 2026. The school will take place at Instituto de Biofísica e Engenharia Biomédica, locally organised by FCiências. ID/CIÊNCIAS. Anyone from FCiências. ID/CIÊNCIAS, Politecnico di Torino (POLITO) or GALWAY can attend (FC. ID in-person and POLITO/GALWAY online) after filling in following registration form: https://forms.gle/FZw821ytmSc89Fn49

𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 3𝐁𝐀𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐧:
3BAtwin is a European Union Twinning Project coordinated by FCiências .ID/CIÊNCIAS-ULISBOA which aims to capacitate them with the various specific/fine knowledge and tools which will allow to accelerate Medical Microwave Imaging (MMWI) from the research bench to the patient bedside.

The main objective of 3BAtwin is for FC .ID/CIÊNCIAS-ULISBOA to gain excellence capacity in all sub-fields related to MMWI research, and become strong competitors in translating their unique breast and axillary region device to the hospital, which will be possible by further establishing a solid collaboration with project partners: GALWAY in Ireland, POLITO in Italy.

𝑾𝒆𝒃𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒆: https://3batwin.rd.ciencias.ulisboa.pt/

𝐎𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥:
➡️ Provide training on the best strategies to licence technology and income models, such as royalties.
➡️ Provide training on Intellectual Property (IP) management, including clinical IP.
➡️ Presentation of specific examples of MedTech, benefiting from GALWAY’s strategic ecosystem with many MedTech international companies and USA investors.

This registration form is open until the 9th of January. You will receive the details for attending the school by e-mail on the 12th of January.

24/12/2025

✨️ IBEB wishes you Happy Holidays! ✨️

09/12/2025

👏🏻A new paper titled “Quantitative Evaluation of Repeatability in Medical Microwave Imaging: A Systematic Review” has just been published in the IEEE Access journal by PhD student Henrique Lopes, together with IBEB researchers and professors Daniela Godinho and Raquel Conceição.

✨Repeatability is a critical requirement for bringing medical microwave imaging (MMWI) into clinical practice. Yet, despite its importance, there is still no agreement on how repeatability should be measured or reported across different systems. Following PRISMA guidelines, the authors conducted the first systematic review focused on how repeatability is currently assessed in MMWI. They provide clear and actionable recommendations to help harmonise repeatability assessment in future MMWI research.

This work was supported by the European Union (3BAtwin, GA 101159623).

Read more at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11270978

02/12/2025

✨ On November 26th, PhD student Henrique Lopes took part in the 9th Annual RedeSaúde Conference in Lisbon, dedicated to the theme “People and Planet: How the Environment Shapes Human Health.” He presented his research “Microwave Imaging for Breast Cancer Screening and Axillary Lymph Node Detection” during the poster session and embraced the challenge of summarizing his work in a dynamic 1-minute pitch.