What is the European Cancer Imaging Initiative?
On 23 January 2023, the European Commission launched the European
Cancer Imaging Initiative
[https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/cancer-imaging] as
a flagship action under Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan
[https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_342]. The
objective of this initiative is to leverage data and digital
technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) or High-Performance
Computing (HPC) to combat cancer. Innovation and deployment of digital
technologies in cancer treatment and care will enable more precise and
faster decision-making, diagnostics, treatments, and predictive
medicines for cancer patients. 

Cancer imaging is a test that helps diagnose cancer, determine its
stage, and evaluate treatment effectiveness. For different types of
cancer there are a variety of cancer imaging datasets. However, these
datasets are now scattered among repositories and clinics in Europe
which makes them not easily accessible to clinicians, researchers, and
innovators for benchmarking and testing. This new initiative aims to
create an open dataset that links all the existing resources and
databases across Europe, working towards a more open, available, and
user-friendly infrastructure of cancer imaging.

The initiative will bring together all national initiatives, networks,
or other relevant projects related to cancer imaging, while ensuring
high ethics standards, trust, security, and protection of personal
data. For example, it will be possible to use Artificial Intelligence
on a large dataset which is standardised and fully compliant with the
General Data Protection Regulation [https://gdpr.eu/] (GDPR). 

The infrastructure is expected to be completed by December 2023,
following which data providers will be able to connect with the
platform. It will be released by the end of 2024, with the final
release expected by the end of 2025. By 2026, the infrastructure
should be fully operational.

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Publication Date/Time
2023-03-01T09:00:00+00:00
The recently launched European Cancer Imaging Initiative aims to
revolutionize cancer imaging through data and digital technologies