CTSC:TTIC.081908

Notice

The Cancer Imagine Program of NCI announces a new funding opportunity entitled “Quantitative Imaging for Evaluation of Responses to Cancer Therapies (U01)”. This cooperative agreement mechanism (PAR-08-225) is designed to promote research in quantitative imaging of tumor response to cancer therapies in clinical trial settings, with the overall goal of facilitating clinical decision making. The complete announcement can be found at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-08-225.html

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Action Items (details below)

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes August 19, 2008

In Attendance (by T-con):

• Annick D. Van den Abbeele
• Ron Kikinis
• Randy Gollub
• Bill Hanlon
• Gordon Williams
• Ann Schlesinger
• Zeke Bernstein-Hanley

1. RSNA sponsored CTSC connection
Annick confirmed she will be our representative at the October ACRIN meeting. Ron Kikinis and Bruce Rosen attended yesterday's RSNA sponsored CTSC Imaging group T-con. Ron reported that this group consists of about 20 well known individuals (e.g. Dan Sullivan, Dan Rubin) who represent many existing Medical Imaging organizations. Ron added links on our top wiki page (see External Collaborators section) to this groups work. He notes that there are several subgroups that have been started. Our team agreed tothe following assignment as representatives to them: Education (Randy), Informatics (Ron/Bill), Imaging Clinical Trials subgroup (Annick/Jeff), Quantification (Annick/Jeff)). Both Ron Kikinis and Annick will attend the RSNA meeting of this group. Ron is going to send an email to the BWH Chair of Radiology to see if there is time on the schedule of Dr. Dan Sullivan's upcoming Grand Rounds visit to set up a meeting between him and our CTSC's Neuroimaging informatics folks (Bill Hanlon, Ron Kikinis, Randy Gollub, Shawn Murphy).

2. Consultation Service
?? Emily Stern, MD Neuroradiologist at BWH

Describe what we currently do:

1. (You have an idea, we tell you if and how you can do it, part one) Provide expert consultation on medical image acquisition, medical image analysis methods (including medical imaging statistics) and experimental design for clinical translational studies under development.
2. (You have an idea, we tell you if and how you can do it, part two) Provide introductions to potential consultants/collaborators who would be able to facilitate the implementation a study.
3. Immediate plan use ourselves (weekly meeting, each site's services, Randy as front door).
4. Near future development working with Informatics core- web based form for consultation expertise, tracking consults- when started/by who/when closed.
5. How to collect performance metrics (and methods for collecting them) for our offered services?

3. Education Program
1) Randy reported on her August 5th meeting with Drs. Ware and Golan. There is no plan for creating any new training programs, rather, like us, the Education group is collating the huge number of existing training programs and working to facilitate cross program integration that will lower barriers for trainees to get more customized educational programs and greater access to existing resources. Dr. Golan's expectation for what we will deliver closely matched what Dr. Williams has already told us and what we are currently planning. That is, to offer broad educational content that will inform Clinical Translational investigators about current Imaging capabilities and how to access them. Randy's pitch to increase the number of trainees with specific expertise in Imaging statistics was appreciated and suggestions made for defining potential Junior Faculty recruitment opportunities as well as post-doctoral positions that could be jointly sponsored by the HSPH Statistics program and one or more of our Imaging groups.
2) CTSC will co-sponsor with NA-MIC a half-day Slicer 3 workshop on Medical Image data visualization and analysis to be held on Thursday 10/30/08 from 12 PM- 2PM at BWH and repeated at MGH on 11/06/08 3) Dana Farber Cancer Imaging group to deliver a 1-2 hour Anatomic Assessment Criteria of Tumor Metrics in Clinical Trials program in or around December. 4) Follow up on the discussion from last week- any takers for the organizational scheme of disease driven sessions? How about for the plans articulated in our July 8 meeting (see those notes)?

4. Image Data Management and Shared Imaging Data
The updated Morphometry BIRN and NAMIC proposal for the CTSC Imaging Consortium and Informatics Core data management system will be ready in time for our next meeting. Plan to attempt to integrate this or at least introduce this to the RSNA sponsored multi-institutional CTSC Imaging Informatics group.

5. Curation of Site resources