The European Federation for Cancer Images (EUCAIM) is a ground-breaking project aiming to power up imaging and artificial intelligence (AI) towards precision medicine for Europe’s cancer patients and citizens that brings together 76 partners from 14 EU member states, among which University of Valencia provides support regarding Data Privacy. The project will address the fragmentation of existing cancer image repositories and establish a distributed Atlas of Cancer Imaging with over 60 million anonymised cancer image data from over 100,000 patients, accessible to clinicians, researchers and innovators across the EU for the development and benchmarking of trustworthy AI tools.
The infrastructure will be further populated by observational studies from hospitals (21 clinical sites in 12 EU countries), include clinical images and link with pathology, molecular and laboratory data and will be expanded to at least 30 distributed data providers from 15 countries by the end of the 4-year project. Federated AI solutions will be trained at the hospital data warehouses, keeping data privacy.
The members of the consortium cover competences in cancer imaging and care, big data in medical imaging, FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data management, ethical and legal aspects of medical data, development and deployment of research infrastructures, AI and machine learning, as well as dissemination, communication and stakeholder outreach in biomedical imaging.
The project is led by professor Luis Martí-Bonmatí, Director of the Medical Imaging Department, Chairman of Radiology, La Fe University and Polytechnic Hospital (Valencia, Spain) and coordinated by the European Institute for Biomedical Imaging Research (EIBIR), established by and headquartered at the European Society of Radiology in Vienna, Austria.
The University of Valencia participates as a partner through the Institute on Robotics and Information and Communication Technologies (IRTIC). The members of the privacy and security area will lead the tasks that guarantee the adequate regulatory compliance of the project. This task not only implies being able to align the project with the General Data Protection Regulation, as it will be necessary to define a comparative framework based on national laws, and recently approved legislation such as the Data Governance Act, and to evolve the project with laws in preparation such as the Data Act, AI Regulation, and European Health Data Space Regulation.
In this sense, Ricard Martínez Martínez, professor of Constitutional Law at the Universitat de València and Director of the Chair of Privacy and Digital Transformation, co-directs the work package on ethics and data protection focusing his efforts on this second aspect. This matter, where anonymization is an important factor, is critical for the guarantee of fundamental rights in EUCAIM and the design of a secure and trustworthy ecosystem for researchers, healthcare institutions, patients and society. On the other hand, the UV will lead one of the first European experiences in "data altruism" aimed at studying how to promote data donation programs for research.
Likewise, professor Francisco Soriano, a member of the IRTIC of the UV, will provide and audit the security requirements to meet the privacy needs of the project, which will include elements related to confidentiality, integrity and traceability of information and use of this private information.
EUCAIM is the cornerstone of the European Commission initiated European Cancer Imaging Initiative, a flagship of the Europe's Beating Cancer Plan (EBCP), which aims to foster innovation and deployment of digital technologies in cancer treatment and care, to achieve more precise and faster clinical decision-making, diagnostics, treatments and predictive medicine for cancer patients.
The project builds upon the results of the work of the “AI for Health Imaging” (AI4HI) Network which consists of 5 large EU-funded projects on big data and Artificial Intelligence in cancer imaging: Chaimeleon, EuCanImage, ProCancer-I, Incisive and Primage.
In line with the European data strategy and supporting the goals of the European Health Data Space, the EUCAIM will partner with the AI Testing and Experimentation Facility for Health under the Digital Europe Programme, allowing small and medium-sized enterprises to access its infrastructure, and rollout will be supported by the services of the European Digital Innovation Hubs.
EUCAIM follows an inclusive, collaborative approach and will interact with a plethora of stakeholders to ensure uptake at political level in member states and wide use of the infrastructure by clinicians, researchers and innovators. Clinical data providers will be invited to join the initiative through an open call procedure during the course of the project.
More information on EUCAIM at https://www.eibir.org/projects/eucaim/
European Commission Factsheet European Cancer Imaging Initiative and EUCAIM: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/92245
European Commission Press Release on launch event of European Cancer Imaging Initiative, 23 January 2022: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_286
Contact for enquiries
Mr Peter Gordebeke, pgordebeke@eibir.org
European Institute for Biomedical Imaging Research (EIBIR)
+43 1 533 40 64 323
EUCAIM is co-funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement umber 1011100633. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Also in:
