CTSC:TTIC.012511

Back to Collaboration:Harvard_CTSC

Agenda

1. Consultations update
2. Feedback from the External Advisory Board Meeting and the Retreat
3. 2011 education program
4. Vignettes

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes January 25, 2010

In attendance:

• Valerie Humblet
• Gordon Harris
• Clare Tempany
• Jeff Yap
• Laura Alice
• Simon Warfield
• Charles Guttmann
• Annick Van den Abbeele
• Bob Lenkinski

1. Consultations update

• This week we did not receive any new requests.

2. Feedback from the External Advisory Board Meeting and the Retreat

• Randy had a chance to further discuss the angiogenesis collaboration at the External Advisory Board meeting and got great positive feedback on the idea from Elliott Antman and Dean Jeffery Flier who offered to help us find Harvard University faculty who might be interested in working with us on it.
• Lee is really itching to have us use eagle-i for Catalyst.

3. 2011 education program

• Imaging basics for research staff: 3 sessions have been scheduled at MGH (Simches 3.120): Risk and benefits of imaging: February 16 (1-2:30 pm), MRI safety: March 3 (2-3:30 pm), Radiation dose: March 16 (2-3:30 pm)
• Two Slicer workshops are scheduled (Countway, 403): Friday February 18 (12-1 pm) and Friday March 11 (12-1 pm). 3D Slicer for Quantitative Medical Imaging. Participants will then be led through a series of 3 tutorials. First, the basics of viewing and processing DICOM volumes in 3D using 3D SLICER. Then, specific hands-on demonstrations will focus on: Quantitative measurements from PET/CT studies. This tutorial takes the trainee through the computation of SUV body weight on a baseline and follow-up study. Quantitative measurement of volumetric change: This tutorial describes the use of ChangeTracker module to detect changes in tumor volume from two MRI scans.
• Valerie will work with the other institution to offer the imaging basics for research staff later this spring.

• • The mission is to better educate people about the different aspect of imaging: screening for disease, phenotyping, biomarkers development.
  • Biomarkers: it is a very hot topics, including at the NIH. We will continue to offer the introductory talk about biomarkers developed by Jeff for the RSNA. During all the other lectures, we should always link what it presented to the field of biomarkers. We need to educate the community more about the quantitative metrics, validation etc.
  • Audience: it is important to also reach out to the senior people in the different departments.
  • The importance of tech training in research practice will also be address this year.
  • The group would be ready to deliver education to pharmaceuticals company if there is a demand.
• Multi-center imaging trial:
  • The activities of this group are tightly linked to the education program.
  • The group is listing all the ACR phantoms at the different institutions, is writing a protocol for MRI neuroimaging trial and can guide investigators who want to use a more complicated protocol.
  • Next step will be to exchange ACR images between institutions.
  • Clare suggested to write imaging manuals for the different modalities (with people to contact, procedure etc) and post them on the Harvard Catalyst website and our wiki.
• NCATS
  • The latest news from the CTSA community is that the CTSA grants will be managed by the new National Center for Advancing Translational Science: NCATS.
  • Our mission is to make sure that our activities reach the goals of the NCATS. We will discuss this action items in the next meetings.
• National and international meeting.
  • We plan to continue to offer education sessions both at the ACRIN annual meeting and at RSNA 2011