HYBRID · Innovative Training Network towards raising and supporting the next generation of creative and entrepreneurial cross-speciality imaging experts

Innovative Training Network towards raising and supporting the next generation of creative and entrepreneurial cross-speciality imaging experts

What is HYBRID about? HYBRID stands for “Healthcare yearns for bright researchers of imaging data”. We seek to provide essential information for personalized medicine that involves non-invasive imaging procedures. Personalized medicine is the practice of using selected and measured characteristics to guide decisions on prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease for patient groups and individual patients. To realize the full potential of personalized medicine, highly-specific, reproducible and quantifiable biomarkers are required for disease characterization. Such biomarkers can be obtained with a number of techniques, of which non-invasive imaging methods have become a focus of attention over the past decade. The ultimate goal of HYBRID is to establish the field of non-invasive disease characterization using various imaging methods. Specifically, we seek to adopt a more inclusive approach to image analysis, which considers anatomical and functional imaging using multiple of these methods, together with related non-imaging parameters that are extracted from patients during their clinical work-up. We propose this all-encompassing method, or holistic approach to deriving valuable information from imaging and non-image related data: HYBRID. The HYBRID Mission Our network brings together international academic, industrial and non-governmental organization partners in a cross-specialty platform to advance imaging sciences as part of personalized medicine with a focus on non-invasive imaging using multiple methods that includes anatomical and functional data from patients. Specifically, we present a consortium of world-leading imaging experts with in-depth knowledge of advanced imaging. All experts are embedded in a clinical environment, thus experienced in converting ideas and knowledge into applications fit for clinical use. The HYBRID Vision Our vision is to support the concept of personalized medicine by providing novel insights into disease characterization and diagnostic methods that are applicable in clinical routine. Conclusions of the HYBRID project The major scientific highlights of HYBRID include – but are not limited to - the derivation of harmonization standards for advanced PET/MR imaging and first approaches towards multi-centric radiomics evaluations (ESR1), the development of automated neural network-based segmentation of organs on PET (ESR7) and CT and MRI as a pre-requisite to SIRT therapy (ESR2), the development and validation of robust whole-body parametric maps as part of PET/MRI studies of humans (ESR5), as well as first advances towards the spatial alignments of histopathological sections and in-vivo imaging information in an effort towards deep learning models for classifying histopathology patches. In fact, many projects set out to embrace AI and machine learning to either automate data analytics or to deriving prediction models as part of clinical decision support, with the latter yielding a widely acknowledged contribution and peer-reviewed study on prostate cancer aggressiveness derived from PET/MR image data, resulting in improved cancer grading with respect to biopsy-based methods, with a potential clinical impact (ESR11). Taken together, these examples attest to the successful conduct of the project, in that we propose a number of validated approaches to use biomarkers derived from dual-modality imaging systems (mainly PET/CT, PET/MR) for improved patient management.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз