Announcement: International imaging data infrastructure partnership to advance critical health research

The EUropean Federation for CAncer Images (EUCAIM) project and the Australian National Imaging Facility have signed an international agreement to coordinate best practices for providing researchers with secure access to clinical imaging data at the European Congress of Radiology on Wednesday.

EUCAIM, a consortium of 95 partners from 17 countries, is deploying Cancer Image Europe, a pan-European digital infrastructure to provide FAIR access to cancer-related data. The Australian National Imaging Facility provides researchers with open access to imaging instruments and expertise, with a major focus on digital services and data collections.

This memorandum of understanding (MoU) underscores a shared commitment to address the unmet demand for world-class practices and digital infrastructure to enable research access to clinical imaging data, accelerating advancements in healthcare globally.

Imaging data offers invaluable research insights into disease understanding, diagnosis, therapy selection, treatment response evaluation, and disease progression, particularly for critically ill patients.

Access to large imaging datasets is fundamental to advancing healthcare, particularly through the development and application of advanced machine learning and AI models, helping predict treatment responses and allowing doctors to tailor therapies to individual patients for better outcomes.

Imaging data is especially challenging to access, centralise, analyse, and link due to its size, sensitivity, heterogeneity, and complexity. A key priority for enabling FAIR access to this data is upholding the stringent data privacy legislation and regulation necessary to protect patients.

This partnership between Cancer Image Europe and National Imaging Facility will mobilise shared experience, software and tools, and align cutting-edge practices to collaboratively address critical challenges and opportunities in the connection, centralisation, and analysis of clinical imaging data for research.

Professor Luis Martí-Bonmatí, EUCAIM Scientific Coordinator commented that “by joining forces with the Australian National Imaging Facility, we will mobilise our shared experience and state-of-the-art resources to address the critical challenges in clinical imaging data management. This partnership will enable us to align best practices and push the boundaries of health research and innovation.”

Australian National Imaging Facility Chief Executive Officer, Professor Wojtek Goscinski said it was a privilege to collaborate on addressing these shared challenges with Cancer Image Europe.

“Quality-controlled and harmonised imaging data provides invaluable evidence to make new discoveries, validate new products and demonstrate new therapies,” Professor Goscinski said.

“Collaboratively working toward this shared goal with Cancer Image Europe will enhance our mission to provide researchers and industry with access to cutting-edge imaging capabilities to help them enable significant impacts on health challenges and to accelerate innovation,” he said.