Unipi Team Leader: Prof. Emanuele Neri, Dipartimento di Ricerca Traslazionale e delle Nuove Tecnologie in Medicina e Chirurgia

In Europe, prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most frequent type of cancer in men and the third most lethal. Current clinical practices, often leading to overdiagnosis and overtreatment of indolent tumors, suffer from lack of precision calling for advanced AI models to go beyond SoA by deciphering non-intuitive, high-level medical image patterns and increase performance in discriminating indolent from aggressive disease, early predicting recurrence and detecting metastases or predicting effectiveness of therapies. To date efforts are fragmented, based on single–institution, size-limited and vendor-specific datasets while available PCa public datasets (e.g. US TCIA) are only few hundred cases making model generalizability impossible.

The ProCAncer-I project brings together 20 partners, including PCa centers of reference, world leaders in AI and innovative SMEs, with recognized expertise in their respective domains, with the objective to design, develop and sustain a cloud based, secure European Image Infrastructure with tools and services for data handling. The platform hosts the largest collection of PCa multi-parametric (mp)MRI, anonymized image data worldwide (>17,000 cases), based on data donorship, in line with EU legislation (GDPR). Robust AI models are developed, based on novel ensemble learning methodologies, leading to vendor-specific and -neutral AI models for addressing 8 PCa clinical scenarios.
To accelerate clinical translation of PCa AI models, we focus on improving the trust of the solutions with respect to fairness, safety, explainability and reproducibility. Metrics to monitor model performance and a causal explainability functionality are developed to further increase clinical trust and inform on possible failures and errors. A roadmap for AI models certification is defined, interacting with regulatory authorities, thus contributing to a European regulatory roadmap for validating the effectiveness of AI-based models for clinical decision making.

Coordinator

IDRYMA TECHNOLOGIAS KAI EREVNAS, Greece

Participants

• FUNDACAO D. ANNA SOMMER CHAMPALIMAUD E DR. CARLOS MONTEZ CHAMPALIMAUD, Portugal
• STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT, Netherlands
• FUNDACION PARA LA INVESTIGACION DEL HOSPITAL UNIVERSITARIO LA FE DE LA COMUNIDAD VALENCIANA, Spain
• UNIVERSITA DI PISA, Italy
• INSTITUT JEAN PAOLI & IRENE CALMETTES, France
• HACETTEPE UNIVERSITESI, Turkey
• FUNDACIO INSTITUT D'INVESTIGACIO BIOMEDICA DE GIRONA DOCTOR JOSEP TRUETA, Spain
• JOAO CARLOS COSTA - DIAGNOSTICO PORIMAGEN, S.A., Portugal
• NACIONALINIS VEZIO INSTITUTAS, Lithuania
• GENIKO ANTIKARKINIKO OGKOLOGIKO NOSOKOMEIO ATHINON O AGIOS SAVVAS, Greece
• THE ROYAL MARSDEN NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE TRUST, United Kingdom
• QS INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACION E INNOVACION SL, Spain
• FONDAZIONE DEL PIEMONTE PER L'ONCOLOGIA, Italy
• CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE, Italy
• THE GENERAL HOSPITAL CORPORATION, United States
• BIOTRONICS 3D LIMITED, United Kingdom
• ADVANTIS MEDICAL IMAGING MONOPROSOPI IDIOTIKI KEFALEOUCHIKI ETAIRIA, Greece
• QUIBIM SOCIEDAD LIMITADA, Spain
• UNIVERSITAT WIEN, Austria

Start date 1 October 2020
End date 30 September 2024
Project cost € 9 997 870
Project funding € 9 997 870
Unipi quota € 240 200
Call title H2020-SC1-FA-DTS-2019-1
Funding Scheme RIA - Research and Innovation action
Unipi role Partner