The facilities included in this infrastructure are located at the CNIC Carlos III in Madrid and have been fully operational since 2010.

They are organized on three platforms: Molecular and Functional Imaging, Advanced Imaging and High Performance Imaging. The Molecular and Functional Imaging Unit provides optical and fluorescence microscopy services and develops new imaging applications that allow molecular details to be achieved in large samples such as whole organs and organisms as well. They also develop special applications such as large area images, cell tracking, shape recognition, multicolored images and 3D and 4D co-localization.

The Advanced Imaging Unit offers state-of-the-art technologies for organ imaging with five modalities: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), hybrid imaging using micro-computed tomography (CT) fusion, and nuclear-positron emission tomography (PET), as well as MRI/PET, ultrasound and optics (two- and three-dimensional fluorescence and luminescence). In addition, it has a laboratory dedicated to nanotechnology and organic chemistry that produces multifunctional nanoparticles and a radiochemistry laboratory that provides radiotracers for the preclinical imaging techniques available at the center.

The High Throughput Imaging Unit is a fully automated infrastructure that provides the latest technology in Flow Cytometry to simultaneously measure multiple optical characteristics of each of the particles or cells present in a suspension, as well as High Content Screening for the discovery of new drugs and for functional genomics approaches using siRNA libraries.