The European Commission presents the European Cancer Imaging Initiative

The European Commission has launched the European Cancer Imaging Initiative within the framework of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan (EBCP). This initiative will contribute to creating a digital infrastructure that connects cancer imaging resources and databases across the European Union. This will help health care providers, research institutes and innovative companies make the best possible use of innovative data-driven solutions for cancer treatment and care.

The Commission’s new proposal will create a new secure, ethical and trusted framework for research teams, professionals and innovative organisations to access information, in line with the European Data Strategy and the European Health Data Space.

According to the Commission, the main European organisations, institutions and research companies will collaborate to design the infrastructure. The aim is to provide easy access to large amounts of cancer imaging data, support the creation of new, and the interoperability of existing, cancer image datasets, and support the testing and development of tools for personalised medicine to advance cancer diagnostics and treatments.

EUICAM project

One of the flagship projects of the European Cancer Imaging Initiative is EUCAIM, which will deploy the federated European data infrastructure to obtain cancer images, based on the work carried out by the European AI For Health Imaging (AI4HI) network. Its goal is to cover more than 100,000 cancer cases by 2025 and nearly 60 million cancer images recorded in a distributed atlas of cancer images.

The AI4HI network is made up of 5 projects funded by the European Commission on Big Data and AI based on medical imaging of cancer: INCISIVE, Chaimeleon, EuCanImage, ProCancer-I, and Primage. In total, the five projects bring together 86 institutions from all around Europe, including seven Catalan organisations: the TIC Salut Social Foundation, Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, the Centre for Genomic Regulation, the University of Barcelona, the Doctor Josep Trueta Girona Biomedical Research Institute Foundation (IDIBGI), the Biomedical Research Clinic Foundation and the Agustí Pi i Sunyer Health Research Institute (IDIBAPS).

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