Workshop: Collaborative Approaches to Cancer Imaging. Applying known methods in new ways.

The Advanced Cancer Imaging Programme presents a one-day workshop to bring together Cambridge based researchers to apply known methods that are used in Physics, Mathematics, Material Sciences and Chemical Engineering to answer unsolved problems for tumour image analysis.

Problems shown below will be presented in more detail to participants on the day; participants can spend time brainstorming ideas and beginning to develop novel mathematical/computational models for each of the problems.

PROBLEMS 

Developing novel methods to unravel tumour heterogeneity

• Cancer is characterised by high intra- and inter tumour heterogeneity.
• Tumour heterogeneity is driven by genomic changes that evolve and affect patient outcome.
• Radiological image modalities (e.g. computed tomography; magnetic resonance imaging; positron emission tomography; ultrasound) non-invasively capture tumour heterogeneity, however, this information is not used for clinical decision-making yet.
• There is a clinical need to develop novel methods that assess and quantify spatial tumour heterogeneity.  
• Can you apply what you know to help us to: 

• Automatically identify heterogeneous areas based on imaging characteristics (e.g. texture analysis, pattern recognition, cluster analysis)?
• Quantify regions?
• Feedback clinically important metrics to the physicians?

Methods for dynamic tracking of Tumour micro environment 

• Can you apply what you know to help us to: 

• Develop temporal tumour modelling?
• Track changes in tumour shape and structure?

Cancer targeting: Detecting disease and delivering therapy: new collaborative strategies.

• Developing novel nanoparticles encapsulating drugs and radionuclides for cancer therapeutics.
• Modified nanocarriers for target specific delivery of drugs
• Radionuclide imaging to monitor distribution of nanoparticles
• Can you apply what you know to help us to:

• Identify novel materials, chemistry and radionuclides for cancer detection and treatment?
• Use nanoparticles as delivery systems for radionuclide therapy?
• Discover new molecular targets for radiopharmaceutical development in diagnosis and therapy?
• Use computational approaches to aid in radiopharmaceutical design, optimising ligand/target affinity, improving pharmacokinetics and target to background properties of cancer targeting agents and nanoparticles?

Multimodality imaging - how to combine data from different imaging techniques

• Can you apply what you know help us to:

• Develop methods to perform fusion of different imaging modalities, eg Ultrasound and MRI imaging?

Material and Structure to Evaluate Tumour Morphology

• 3D printed phantoms for computed tomography (CT) using different materials provide excellent opportunities for designing texture phantoms that allow studying the effect scanner properties, scan settings, and image reconstruction techniques have on radiomics computation. Furthermore, phantom scans might help in the difficult task of feature selection when it comes to radiomics studies and integration of radiomics with other 'omics data sets.
• Can you apply what you know to help us to:

• Develop temporal tumour modelling?
• Use 3D moulds for evaluating tumour texture?

Thursday 13th February 2020; Maxwell Centre, Cavendish Laboratory, JJ Thomson Ave, Cambridge CB3 0HE

Meeting Programme

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