The SDN Institute is a multi-specialized structure operating for over 40 years in laboratory and image diagnostics, nationally accredited for the provision of health services such as Laboratory testing, Diagnostics for Images and Nuclear Medicine / PET.

The primary objective of the IRCCS SDN is to meet, with professionalism and highly qualified service, the entire diagnostic process of the patient, ensuring constant but discreet assistance and providing a technologically advanced environment, constantly integrated and updated.

Besides clinical-care activity, SDN carries out scientific divulgation and research in vivo and in vitro diagnostics focused on application and integrating preclinical and clinical diagnostic methodologies in oncological pathologies, cardiovascular, neurological, and metabolic-functional.

The Ministry of Health recognized SDN activity by decree of 11 January 2007, 2014, and then in 2016 reconfirmed the SDN Institute’s qualification as Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization and Healthcare (IRCCS) for the discipline of “Integrated Imaging and Laboratory Diagnostics.”

The IRCCS qualification provides that, in addition to excellence in clinical care, there is a solid commitment to translational research in all diagnostics areas. The aim is to provide the National Health Service with data and guidelines to make the equipment and methodologies for diagnosis and follow-up more effective and innovative.

All the facilities and related resources are at the service of both healthcare and scientific research activities. Their number and quality make it possible to test and conduct highly innovative research projects and to attract the interest of public and private entities.

The concentration of these technologies and skills enables the SDN Institute to excel in integrated diagnostics and attract many patients from central-southern Italy.

The SDN Institute is constantly striving to improve the quality of its procedures and therefore voluntarily submits to external audits of its standards by national (ISO 9001 certification) and international entities (Joint Commission International, European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS) and European Board of Nuclear Medicine (EBNM)).

The research activities are supported by highly innovative core facilities, some of which are also open to external users:

• Image Processing Centre NAPLAB;
• Statistics and Bioinformatics Laboratory;
• Radiopharmacy;
• Laboratory of Nanotechnology;

Biobank included in the BBMRI (Biobanking and BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure) node to establish an Expert Centre, ATMA-CE, a technology hub focused on radiomics and validation of imaging biomarkers.

In carrying out its experimental and clinical research programmes, the SDN Institute has for many years developed formal and informal scientific collaboration agreements with Universities, IRCCS, Institutions and public and private, national, and international entities in the fields related to its research activities, with which researchers are interchanged, and research of common interest is shared.

It is also a member of infrastructure networks, such as EIBIR – European Institute for Biomedical Imaging Research, EuroBioImaging – large-scale pan-European research infrastructure project of ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure), ADNI – Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, KIC INNOSTAR, Knowledge and Innovation Community Italian node for “Healthy living and active ageing,” EATRIS – European Advanced Translational Research Infrastructure in Medicine, BBMRI – Biobanking and BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure, research infrastructure involving biobanks and biological resource centres – European Expert Center (ATMA) and Networks promoted by the Ministry of Health.