RESOURCES

Cancer Tracer Synthesis Resources

http://imagingpreview.cancer.gov/programsandresources/cancer-tracer-synthesis-resources

CIP has been creating Investigational New Drug Applications (IND) for imaging agents in order to engage in multi-center clinical trials of these materials. A subset of the documents filed is being made available to the research community to implement routine synthesis of tracers at their own facilities and to assist investigators with the filing of their own INDs. Four document sets are currently available: F-18 fluorothymidine (FLT), [18F]Fluoromisonidazole, 1H-1-(3-[18F]-Fluoro-2-Hydroxy-Propyl)-2-Nitro-Imidazole, [18F]FMISO, 16-α-[18F]Fluoroestradiol and Sodium [F-18]fluoride.

The Cancer Imaging Archive

The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) is provided by CIP as a service to the research community. TCIA provides a freely accessible, open archive of cancer-specific medical images and metadata accessible for public download. A huge amount of clinical and research images are collected each year with many high value data sets already available. TCIA organizes and catalogs the images so that they may be used for a variety of purposes including:

• Cancer researchers can use this data to test new hypotheses and develop new analysis techniques to advance our scientific understanding of cancer

• Engineers and developers can build new analysis tools and techniques using this data as test material for developing and validating algorithms

• Professors can use it as a teaching tool for introducing students to medical imaging technology and cancer phenotypes

• The general public can see how cancer appears in diagnostic images and learn about the instruments doctor uses to diagnose cancer and measure the success of treatment

CIP is regularly expanding the contents of the archive with additional data sets that promote cancer imaging research. Please visit TCIA for guidelines and acceptance criteria for new image collections.

The Cancer Genome Atlas Imaging Genomics

Image data collections are being built and archived in TCIA to offer an opportunity to encourage a new and emerging research community focused on connecting cancer phenotypes to genotypes by making available clinical images matched to the NIH TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas). As an opportunity to leverage that wealth of new biomedical knowledge, CIP committed substantial effort to gather and place in TCIA the clinical diagnostic images that match the genomically analyzed TCGA tissue cases. CIP has encouraged an ad hoc image research team to study glioblastoma.

Lung Image Database Consortium

The intent of the Lung Imaging Database Consortium (LIDC) initiative is to support a consortium of institutions to develop consensus guidelines for a spiral-CT lung image resource and to construct a database of spiral- CT lung images. With this goal in mind, the Imaging Database Resources Initiative, a partnership funded through FNIH, created a public database of lung CT and X-ray images for use as a resource for the international medical imaging community. Led by NCI, seven academic centers and eight medical imaging companies together identified, addressed, and resolved challenging technical issues to create a robust database containing more than 1,000 anonymized cases from lung cancer screening trials, each carefully assessed and annotated by experienced radiologists. This publicly available database can be used by developers of medical imaging and computer aided diagnosis technologies to spur development, validation, and dissemination of computer aided diagnosis in clinical practice.

Ultrasound Research Interface

The Ultrasound Research Interface (URI) permits extensive instrument parameter control of a commercially available scanner that allows access to, and export of, the beam-formed signal data while simultaneously displaying the ultrasound system-processed data as a clinical image. The instrument will be available to clinicians and ultrasound physicists pursuing fundamental and clinical research in ultrasound. The interface for the first time allows extensive pre-display control over a wide range of scanning and receiving system properties. The interface runs on a current ultrasound machine and the data is network-transmissible to stand-alone computer systems (PCs).

The intent of this concept, sponsored by a contract from CIP and implemented by a leading commercial manufacturer, is to allow biomedical engineers, clinical, and physics researchers to develop innovative new research protocols and ways of interacting in flexible research groups. It will allow a wider clinical research community to explore ultrasound characterization of specific diseases, and to extend the horizons of ultrasound into new frontiers in contrast materials development, signal processing, and tissue characterization. The expectation for this interface is modeled after the MRI research interfaces made available to MR researchers in academia over the last 20 years that resulted in the development of MRI imaging protocols for a wide range of clinical investigations including cancer.