Foundation for the National Institutes of Health

Imaging software analysis as applied to digital data collected by X-ray-CT, MRI, CT, and PET, is increasingly central to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. New software methods for interpreting and managing this information so that physicians, researchers, and most importantly, patients, derive the greatest possible benefit must now be evaluated in a more standardized manner to ensure their optimum performance.

This project is designed to improve patient diagnosis and treatment by encouraging the development of more advanced medical imaging software tools. The goal is to rapidly create a public database of lung CT and X-Ray images that can be used by industry as a research resource to improve the optimization and evaluation of computer aided diagnosis (CAD) products to improve the clinical management of lung cancer. This focused demonstration project expands upon an existing NCI initiative, the Lung Imaging Database Consortium, and draws upon the Lung Cancer Screening Trial. Eight medical imaging companies are participating in the two-year initiative: AGFA Healthcare, Fuji Photo Film Co., General Electric Company, iCAD, Inc., Carestream Health, Philips Healthcare, Riverain Medical, and Siemens Medical Solutions.

This project is part of NCI’s efforts to speed the development and dissemination of quantitative informatics tools for imaging and integration of other patient data for clinical decision making. This will help enable the use of molecular imaging and other molecular-based methods for patient-specific diagnosis and assessment of therapy response.