José Mª Benlloch Baviera
New Technologies 2008PhD in Physical Sciences, Institute of Corpuscular Physics, University of Valencia
Jury rulingThe jury for the Rei Jaume I New Technologies Prize, meeting in Valencia, has unanimously decided to award the 2008 prize to Mr José Mª Benlloch Baviera.
This is in recognition of his innovative work in the development of medical imaging instruments, which has led to a reduction in mortality rates and has been adopted by hospitals worldwide. Of particular note is the development of a portable mini-gamma camera, which, with a resolution ten times higher than that of larger commercial cameras, and thanks to its portability, enables real-time localisation of the sentinel lymph node in breast and prostate cancers and melanoma. The ‘functional gamma navigator’, which enables the precise determination of the tumour region to be resected, and the positron emission tomography (PET) module—initially used in physiological studies on mice—are also notable applications of particle detector technology in medicine.
