QIN Activities

Interactions between QIN and the National Clinical Trials Network for Translation

QIN continues to develop a pathway for directing quantitative methods in clinical trials. In order to determine the best ways to test quantitative imaging tools in national clinical trial settings, collaborations are underway between the NCTN (National Clinical Trials Network) and the QIN groups. Interactions between QIN and ECOG-ACRIN, Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, and the NRG Oncology group and SWOG are under way.

QIBA-QIN Collaboration

The Quantitative Imaging Biomarker Alliance (QIBA) provides a forum for stakeholders to identify needs, barriers, and solutions to develop and test consistent, reliable, valid, and achievable quantitative imaging results across imaging platforms, clinical sites, and time. Stakeholders include the clinical research community, imaging equipment manufacturers, the pharmaceutical industry, government, and medical informatics companies. As the QIN moves from development and optimization of clinical tools for therapy response to challenges of clinical translation and eventual commercialization of the tools, the missions of QIN and QIBA draw closer together. As a result, it is to the benefit of both organizations to begin to work together. Plans are being formulated that will create avenues for sharing goals and strategies in the coming years.

QIN Challenges and Collaborative Projects

QIN members are involved in examining various quantitative imaging and image-assessment parameters through network-wide cooperative projects. In order to more effectively utilize the cooperative power of the network in conducting Computational Challenges in benchmarking of tools and methods, and Collaborative Projects in analytic assessment of imaging technologies, the QIN Challenge Task Force has developed policies and procedures to enhance the value of these activities by developing guidelines and leveraging of NCI resources to help their administration and manage dissemination of results.

Challenges and Collaborative Projects (CCPs) are further divided into Technical and Clinical CCPs. As the first NCI network to engage in CCPs, we anticipate a variety of CCPs to be conducted by QIN teams in the coming years. These will be aimed to (a) benchmark advanced software tools for clinical decision support, (b) explore new imaging biomarkers for therapeutic assessment, and (c) establish consensus on a range of methods and protocols in support of the use of quantitative imaging to predict and assess response to cancer therapy. CCP projects often result in publication of manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals, describing the design, implementation, and results of the collaborative effort.