UNIQUE
Unifying Imaging with Quantum Entanglement
The Big Question
What if one scan could unify today’s imaging — and reveal a new layer of biology?
The Problem
- Even with today’s major advances in medical imaging and tools, important biological changes remain difficult or impossible to see. This limits medicine’s ability to detect disease early.
- Conditions such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (a progressive brain disease), neurodegenerative disorders, pancreatic cancer, and other chronic diseases are often only seen after significant—and sometimes irreversible—damage has occurred.
The Solution
- The UNifying Imaging with QUantum Entanglement (UNIQUE) program’s goal is to expand what medicine can measure.
- The program aims to capture information about tissues and molecules that standard anatomical, functional, or molecular imaging may miss. UNIQUE will explore a new source of biomedical imaging contrast based on quantum-derived observables and test whether these signals can provide biologically meaningful information that complements today’s imaging tools.
- If successful, UNIQUE would establish a new imaging paradigm that integrates anatomical, functional, molecular, and quantum-derived information, laying the foundation for the next generation of biomedical imaging.
Only ARPA-H can...
- Create an entirely new way to measure biology by taking on the high-risk, high-reward challenge of moving beyond incremental advances in today’s imaging technologies.
- Accelerate convergence across fields that rarely work together, uniting quantum science, medical imaging, engineering, materials science, AI, and clinical medicine around a transformative health outcome.
- Build a “time machine” for disease biology, establishing the first unified framework for anatomical, functional, molecular, and quantum-derived imaging to reveal previously unseen biological information, and enable disease to be detected and understood years earlier than is possible today.
Solicitation
What ARPA-H needs to solve this problem
UNIQUE seeks cross-disciplinary performer teams with expertise spanning quantum science, radiological sciences, biomedical imaging, engineering, materials science, computational modeling, and AI-based reconstruction and interpretation. Teams should be able to both measure quantum-derived observables and interpret them as meaningful biomedical imaging signals. UNIQUE has two technical areas:
- Technical area 1: Imaging Core - teams will focus on the physical systems needed to generate and measure quantum observables in clinically relevant biomedical settings. This includes advances in quantum-correlated photon production and collection, engineered source materials and nanomaterials, quantum-aware detectors, and methods to determine whether decoherence and correlation loss can become sources of biological contrast.
- Technical area 2: Quantum AI Interpretation and Fusion - teams will develop a computational foundation for quantum-derived imaging, including physics-informed artificial intelligence, quantum-aware reconstruction, multimodal data fusion, uncertainty quantification, and real-time interpretation of multidimensional quantum observables.
Notice ID: ARPA-H-SOL-26-162
ARPA-H invites interested parties to review the solicitation, which is posted and maintained on SAM.gov. The solicitation outlines the opportunity and its requirements, key dates and deadlines, submission documents and templates, evaluation criteria for submissions, and information on how to apply.
Key Dates:
Dates are estimates and subject to change. Please reference the solicitation for the most up-to-date information.
- Solution Summary Due: October 30, 2026 at 11:59PM ET
A summary is required to submit a full proposal. - Full Proposal Due: December 15, 2026 at 11:59PM ET
After submission of a solution summary, proposers will either be encouraged or discouraged from submission of a full proposal. It is strongly recommended that only proposers who are encouraged to submit a full proposal do so.
Ready to apply? To submit, sign-in to the ARPA-H Solutions site
Frequently Asked Questions
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Proposers' Day
This is an optional event for the proposer community to learn more about this opportunity, ask questions, and make connections. This event is not intended for patients, patient advocates, the media, or general interest audiences.
Event date: October 15, 2026. Registration required by October 13.
Event location: Hybrid with in-person location to be announced.
Special Notice ID: ARPA-H-SN-26-162
Program Manager
