UNIQUE-SN-ARPA-H-SN-26-162.pdf

Special Notice (SN) ARPA-H-SN-26-162

Proposers’ Day Announcement for

Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) / Health

Science Futures (HSF) Office

Opportunity: UNifying Imaging with QUantum Entanglement (UNIQUE)

I. KEY INFORMATION

Table 1. Proposer’s Day Key Information

Proposers’ Day October 15th, 2026, at 8:30 AM ET

Live Q&A October 15th, 2026, from 11:30 AM to 12:15 PM ET

Lightning Talks / Sidebars October 15th, 2026, from 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM ET

Location Hybrid (In Person and Online) TBD

Q&A / Website for registration http://solutions.arpa-h.gov/Events/UNIQUE

Q&A / Registration opens September 18th, 2026, at 12:00 PM ET

Q&A / Registration closes 48 hours before the event starts.

Technical Point of Contact Wilfred Ngwa, Program Manager, ARPA-H / HSF Office

Email UNIQUE@arpa-h.gov

II. INTRODUCTION

This Special Notice (SN) is intended to alert the scientific community to a newly approved

Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Program and notify potential proposers of an associated Proposers’ Day (PD). Under the cognizance of Health Science

Futures (HSF), ARPA-H is publishing an Innovative Solutions Opening (ISO) for the UNifying

Imaging with QUantum Entanglement (UNIQUE) Program no later than September 18th, 2026.

The HSF Mission Office of ARPA-H is sponsoring a hybrid in person and virtual PD for the planned proposer community in support of the UNIQUE Program ISO.

Potential proposers are encouraged to view the Proposers’ Day recording and attend the optional Sidebars. While not mandatory, ARPA-H is hosting the UNIQUE Proposers’ Day to achieve the following objectives:

• Draw attention of the scientific community to the UNIQUE technical areas.

• Provide information about the effort to potential proposers, including details about the overall effort goals, solution summary, and full proposal structure for the ISO, and how they might respond to ARPA-H’s ISO.

• Share the intended scope, timeline, and scale of the UNIQUE Program and how the proposers, in collaboration with the ARPA-H team and resources, can accomplish the collective mission of accelerating healthcare outcomes for all Americans.

• Promote teaming arrangements among potential proposers to achieve program goals.

The PD will include brief overview presentations by government personnel; three (3)-minute lightning talks for potential proposers highlighting technical capabilities and promoting teaming arrangements; and five (5)-minute private sidebar meetings between the ARPA-H team and potential proposers. A limited number of sidebar meetings will be available to participants, and sidebar meetings must be scheduled via the registration website. ARPA-H will collect participant questions throughout the event and publish answers to a publicly available Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) (https://arpa-h.gov/explore-funding/programs/unique/faqs) and on SAM.gov.

Attendance at this event is not a requirement for submission of a solution summary, full proposal, or selection for funding; however, it is anticipated that multi-party teaming arrangements will be needed to successfully innovate and integrate the critical technologies necessary to meet the UNIQUE program goals. Information relayed during the PD will be made available on the program webpage as well as SAM.gov.

Advance Registration is required for the live Q&A and sidebar meetings. Registration requests will only be accepted from the potential proposer community as participation is not intended for patients, patient advocates, media or a general interest audience.

III. UNIQUE– PROGRAM INFORMATION

While full details of the UNIQUE Program will be provided in the UNIQUE ISO, the following is a brief description of the full effort. Proposers should refer to the UNIQUE ISO for more details.

Overview

Every major revolution in medical imaging has been driven by a new way to measure biology.

X-ray and computed tomography (CT) revealed internal anatomy; magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed soft-tissue structure and physiology; positron emission tomography (PET) revealed molecular activity. Each new imaging contrast exposed previously inaccessible biological information and changed how disease is detected, understood, and treated.

Despite these advances, important dimensions of biology remain beyond the reach of today’s imaging technologies. Current modalities provide powerful but incomplete views of anatomy, physiology, and molecular activity. Even when combined, they cannot fully characterize the dynamic tissue microenvironment, including subtle changes in microstructure, oxygenation, metabolism, redox state, molecular organization, and other processes that may precede structural disease. As a result, many devastating conditions, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), neurodegenerative disorders, pancreatic cancer, and other chronic diseases, are often detected only after substantial, and sometimes irreversible biological damage has occurred. Medicine remains fundamentally constrained by what it can measure.

https://arpa-h.gov/explore-funding/programs/unique/

Recent advances in quantum science suggest a new opportunity to expand the measurable biology of disease. Studies have shown that 511 keV photon pairs generated during positron annihilation can retain measurable quantum correlations. These quantum-derived observables, including photon correlation signatures, correlation loss or decoherence, and positronium-sensitive interactions, may encode biological information distinct from conventional imaging contrast. If measurable and interpretable in biomedical settings, these observables could provide a new window into tissue composition, microstructure, molecular organization, oxygenation, metabolism, and other features of the disease microenvironment.

However, major barriers remain. Scattering, environmental interactions, and detector noise can reduce or obscure measurable quantum correlations; current detector architectures are not optimized for high-rate, high-resolution quantum coincidence imaging; and existing reconstruction methods cannot yet translate multidimensional quantum observables into biologically meaningful images in real time. Such challenges have kept quantum biomedical imaging largely at the proof-of-concept stage.

UNIQUE asks whether quantum observables can open a new frontier in biomedical measurement, revealing disease biology that remains invisible to today’s imaging technologies.

Technical Approach

UNIQUE will explore a fundamentally new imaging contrast for biomedicine, with quantum-derived observables. Rather than treating quantum correlations, decoherence, and positronium-sensitive interactions as artifacts or secondary physical effects, UNIQUE will establish whether they can serve as biologically meaningful signals that complement today’s anatomical, functional, and molecular imaging.

UNIQUE’s goal is not to replace existing imaging technologies, but to expand what medicine can measure. The effort will test whether entangled or otherwise quantum-correlated 511 keV photon pairs can support a unified imaging framework that integrates anatomical, functional, molecular, and quantum-derived information, including ghost-imaging-inspired approaches that infer biological information from photon-pair correlations. UNIQUE envisions this integrated quantum-derived biological signal space as a complementary imaging dimension that extends conventional anatomical, functional, and molecular characterization.

UNIQUE is organized around two integrated technical areas (TAs). TA1 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 other materials and methods to determine whether decoherence and correlation loss can become sources of biological contrast.

TA2 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.

Together, these technical areas will demonstrate whether quantum observables can be reproducibly measured, reconstructed, and linked to meaningful biological states. If successful, UNIQUE would establish the feasibility of a new imaging paradigm that integrates anatomical, functional, molecular, and quantum derived information, laying the foundation for the next revolution of biomedical imaging.

TA1: Imaging Core The goal of TA1 is to establish the feasibility of generating and measuring quantum-derived imaging contrast using entangled 511 keV photons, positronium-sensitive interactions, and decoherence-aware imaging architectures in controlled phantom and benchtop systems.

TA2: Quantum AI Interpretation and Fusion The goal of TA2 is to develop AI-driven reconstruction and fusion methods capable of integrating anatomical, functional, molecular, and quantum-derived observables into unified multidimensional imaging representations.

Proposal Option Applicants must submit comprehensive proposals to address both TA1 and TA2.

IV. UNIQUE– PROPOSERS’ DAY (PD) INFORMATION

Proposers’ Day Participation and Deliverables

This SN and PD include one specific opportunity for prospective proposers to identify team members for potentially expanded future efforts:

Lightning Talks

Interested attendees are invited to submit one (1) MS Power Point or Adobe PDF slide that summarizes their interests and capabilities. These will be presented to the entire PD audience during the lightning talk portion of the PD. Submitted presentations consisting of multiple slides or a single slide with multiple layers will not be granted a time slot. Lightning talk submissions (no more than one per organization) will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis, until the maximum possible number of submissions (given time constraints) is reached.

Interested attendees must identify their intention to submit the lightning talk during registration. The deadline to submit lightning talk slides is September 22, 2026.

Teaming Profiles

Interested parties are also invited to submit a ‘teaming profile’ via the link here)

(https://solutions.arpa-h.gov/Teaming) and below. The teaming profile will describe the technical competencies, team capabilities, team composition, research areas of interest, unique facilities and other capabilities, as they relate to the program, and desired technical/other competencies sought from other potential team partners. The profile will include, at a minimum:

• Contact information, to include name, organization, email, telephone number, mailing address, and website

• Brief description of the proposer’s technical competencies and relevant facilities

• Desired technical competencies and facilities from other potential team members, if applicable

All teaming profiles must be submitted via the UNIQUE Teaming Profile Form Link

(https://solutions.arpa-h.gov/Teaming) The teaming profile will be updated regularly and made available on the program's teaming profile site https://solutions.arpa-h.gov/Teaming.

Specific content, communications, networking, and team formation are the sole responsibility of participants. ARPA-H does not endorse any participating organization or exercise any responsibility for improper dissemination of the team profiles.

Live Q&A

A live Q&A session will be led by ARPA-H’s Business Innovation Division (BID) during UNIQUE PD. UNIQUE PD participants are encouraged to use this time to discuss any UNIQUE contracting questions you have with our contracting experts. ARPA-H will collect participants’ questions and BID responses and make them available in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) in: https://arpa-h.gov/explore-funding/programs/unique/faqs and on Sam.gov.

Registration Information

Participants must register in advance through the registration website. The registration will remain open until 48 hours before the start of the event. Note that there will be no same-day registration. An online registration form and various other meeting details can be found at the registration website: http://solutions.arpa-h.gov/Events/UNIQUE.

All inquiries should be addressed to UNIQUE@arpa-h.gov. Please refer to the UNIQUE (ARPA- H-SN-26-126) in all correspondence. Prior to submitting an e-mail inquiry, please check the FAQs (https://arpa-h.gov/explore-funding/programs/unique/faqs) or sam.gov to see if your question is answered there.

V. POINTS OF CONTACT

Technical Point of Contact

Wilfred Ngwa, Program Manager, ARPA-H / HSF Office Email: UNIQUE@arpa-h.gov

All inquiries should reference “UNIQUE Proposers’ Day (ARPA-H-SN-26-126)” in the subject line of the email.

https://arpa-h.gov/explore-funding/programs/unique/faqs https://arpa-h.gov/explore-funding/programs/unique/faqs

VI. WEBINAR INFORMATION

Attendees will receive the link to the webinar once they are verified and registration is confirmed.

VII. DISCLAIMER

This SN is issued solely for information and potential new effort planning purposes; the SN does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals or solution summaries. Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding award.

Submission of any information in response to the SN is voluntary and is not required to propose to subsequent ARPA-H ISOs or research solicitations on this or any other topic. ARPA-H will not provide reimbursement for costs incurred in responding to this SN. Respondents are advised that ARPA-H is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted under this SN.