CTSC:TTIC.060909

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Agenda

8:30-8:40: PCIR review and new request for consultation
8:40-9:00: Presentation of SPINE (Charles)
9:00-9:45: Education program
9:45-10:00: Coffee break
10:00-11:30: Evaluation plan

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes June 9, 2009

In attendance:

• Randy Gollub
• Valerie Humblet
• Clare Tempany
• Simon Warfield
• Bruce Rosen
• Gordon Harris
• Annick Van den Abbeele
• Jeff Yap
• Charles Guttmann
• Bill Hanlon
• Yong Gao
• Laura Alice
• Neil Rofsky

1. PCIR reviews and Update on imaging consultation requests

• Simon and Stephan will be tasked to review the new PCIR protocols with pediatric studies. The rest of the consortium will review the adult studies.
• Discussion of new consultations (Dr Cypess, imaging of brown fat, Dr Chitnis, data transfer)
  
  • Charles will work with Bill and Yong on Dr Chitnis request.
  • Charles will contact Dr Cypess regarding the use of Slicer to image brown fat. If more clinical expertise is needed, Jeff and Annick will help.

2. Presentation of SPINE

• Charles gave a demonstration of his SPINE system, a data and workflow management system.

3. Education program

• Access to education material.
  • The members agreed that slides will be made available to the public after it has been presented. The last slide will include an acknowledgment of Catalyst support.
  • The group will work with the informatics department to track the number of downloads.
• Current lectures available.
  • Several members have a lecture on MRI and other modalities safety. Valerie will collect them. The group wants to come with a best practice training and offer it to the different institutions. The target audience will be the physicians but also the technologists. The long term goal is to have this training accredited for CME or other credits specific for technologists.
  • Hands-on trainings on Slicer (and eventually other software) will be offered at each institution.
  • A link to more specialized courses will be posted on the Catalyst website. Valerie will compile them first.
• RSNA workshop.
  • An educational workshop proposed in collaboration with Johns Hopkins Medical Center and Duke University has been approved. The content needs to be finalized (to be done on June 15 during national CTSA t-con). The major topics are:
    • Overview of imaging biomarkers and their use in clinical trials
    • Generic principles of image registration, segmentation, visualization
    • Description of each of the 3 imaging biomarkers and requirements for standardized acquisition in multi-center trials (e.g. RSNA QIBA)
  • The members proposed that this tutorial should be used as a radiology grand round at each institution. Now is the right time to contact the different program directors because they organize the agenda during the summer.
• Clare suggested to contact the resident program directors (other than radiology) and ask them if they would be interested in incorporating an one hour module on imaging during their research seminars. Valerie will make a directory for the different institutions.
• Long-term view.
  • The goal of the consortium is to enforce the use of imaging in research and in clinical trials. A course such as "Steps to integrate imaging in a clinical trial" would be very valuable.
  • Educate the medical community on the differences between clinical and research imaging is also important. The group proposed to develop the following lecture: Imaging in Research. The target audience would be the radiology residents.
  • Annick brought the subject of tool validation. Everybody agreed that validation across site is crucial. We must teach the principles on what are the key metrics to evaluate a software/method but right now the group has no resources to do the actual validation of these tools. Eventually, being a group with a lot of expertise, we could work on getting extra funding to develop this big task.
  • Standardization of clinical trials. It is important to evaluate a set of variables for the different diseases. Our goal would be to come with a Harvard protocol that people nationally could modify to their needs.

4. Evaluation plan

• The group ran out of time to work on the evaluation plan. Valerie will have individual meeting with the members, collect their input and summarize it.

5. Futur agenda

• The group will meet with Sabune Winkler, Harvard Catalyst Regulatory Affairs Support Manager, on July 14 to discuss all the regulatory issues associated with the medical imaging informatics project.
• The group needs to put together a couple of slides to articulate the vision of the project. The overall goal is to allow people with IRB approval to share and transfer data between institutions, for research purpose. The group must now work on the underlying questions:
  • How do we get volunteers involved, some dont' want to get a medical record number, there must be a unique way to identify them?
  • Most trials involved patients who already have a medical record number and we are not changing the way regular patients are enroll, we must then come with a very efficient tracking system to include every subject but not count them twice.
  • Is the global solution the creation of a PACS dedicated to research? In that case, there must be a statement in the consent letters saying that the data may end up in a research PACS and be used for other purposes.