CTSC:TTIC.102808

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Action Items (details below)

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes October 28, 2008

In Attendance:

• Randy Gollub
• Carolyn Zyloney
• Gordon Harris
• Bob Lenkinski
• Bruce Rosen
• Annick D. Van den Abbeele
• Jeff Yap
• Laura Alice
• Neil Rofsky
• Sarah McMordie
• Bill Hanlon
• Gordon Williams

1. Future Educational Programs

• The Imaging Consortium proposed several courses for 2009
  • Annick has agreed to host a workshop on tumor metrics in the first quarter of 2009.
  • Greg Sorenson has been invited to give a lecture on cardiovascular imaging
  • Ellen Grant has been asked to give a workshop on general neuroimaging
• The CTSC has a system in place that will make scheduling a venue for the educational offerings simple
• Neil brought up the question of whether and how to use the educational offerings to educate its user community about the CTSC and its educational service.

2. Consultation Service

• The image at the top of the consultation web-page will scroll through several pictures.
  • The Imaging Group is requested to submit any ideas for these pictures in the next several days.

3. Imaging Program at Harvard and MIT

• Randy Buckner is the interim representative for Harvard FAS in the Imaging Consortium and Randy Gollub is the official liaison between Harvard and the Imaging Consortium
• John Gabrieli heads the imaging services at MIT.
• Randy Gollub met with Randy Buckner from Harvard and John Gabrieli from MIT to discuss their clinical translational imaging needs and consultation service needs at their institutions

4. Physiological Monitoring Equipment for Imaging Research

• Both Harvard and MIT have requested logistic and technical support for physiological monitoring at their imaging acquisition sites, per requests from the user community.
• GCRC resources website

5. Imaging Information and Acquisition Liaison Job

• The title Navigator is reserved for the official CTSC Central Navigators and cannot be used by the Imaging Consortium to refer to the Imaging Triage Consultant/Imaging Information and Acquisition Liaison
  • Consortium members have been requested to submit a new title for this job opportunity. There may be a prize for the best job title.

6. Medical Image Analysis Services

• Clinical translational investigators may wish to purchase analysis services
• Several medical image analysis services already exist but with a limited scope
  • The TIMC offers its imaging analysis services for cancer clinical trials to all DF/HCC and non-DF/HCC oncology PIs on a fee-for-service basis.
  • The Center for Morphometric Analysis at MGH offers analysis services for structural MRI imaging.
  • Bruce Fischel's Computational Analysis service at MGH also offers structural MRI analysis services.
• John Gabrieli at MIT has mentioned that he is interested in an image analysis service
  • The Imaging Consortium has invited John Gabrieli to a future meeting to discuss imaging at MIT

• The Imaging Consortium has obtained the slides from the CTSC retreat.
• The Imaging Consortium will work together at the next meeting (October 28th at Harvard Medical School Countway Library) to prepare additional slides about the Imaging Consortium and its consultation service.
• The draft of the presentation will be sent to Consortium members via email prior to the October 28th meeting.
• Consortium members will use this PowerPoint to present the CTSC Imaging Consultation Services at the Radiology Division Heads Meetings within each institution.

• Dan Sullivan led the t-con. Ron Kikinis, Bill Hanlon, and Randy Gollub were present and represented the Harvard CTSC.

• Bill Hanlon from the TIMC has been invited to the November 7th National CTSA Image Informatics meeting in Chicagoland and will represent the Harvard CTSC at this meeting.

• The goal of the meeting is to work out the details of the grant proposal to support medical image informatics.
  • Bill Hanlon is charged with sharing the details of i2b2 and XNAT to see how it will fit into the national CTSA informatics plans.

• One topic of discussion at the CTSA t-con was the idea of setting up standardized measurements and standardizing the cost of image acquisition and analysis. This has spurred interest in how the TIMC does business.
  • Currently the TIMC (Tumor Imaging Metrics Core) offers its data analysis services to trials within the DF/HCC.
  • The November 7th meeting in Chicago is one potential opportunity for Bill to share information about the TIMC with other CTSCs.
  • Before we proceed with sharing the strategies employed by the TIMC with the world, the TIMC PIs will decide what information they wish to make publicly available.

• Bill Hanlon has been invited to present information about the TIMC at the RSNA meeting.

• IRAT, the Imaging Response Assessment Team, has the goal of providing funding to encourage clinical collaboration between imaging scientists and oncologic investigators at Cancer Centers to identify new oncologic imaging research opportunities in clinical trials that warrant multi-center clinical investigations and integrate imaging data as potential biomarkers or candidate surrogate markers in clinical therapeutic trials. IRAT is entering its third year of funding, but is currently looking for other sources of funding to support its work.

• Few other CTSCs have as well establish and broadly knowledgeable senior leadership as the Harvard CTSC. This puts the Harvard CTSC in a leadership position.

2. Communication with Imaging Community

• The Imaging Consortium has obtained the slides from the CTSC retreat.
• The Imaging Consortium will work together at the next meeting (October 28th at Harvard Medical School Countway Library) to prepare additional slides about the Imaging Consortium and its consultation service.
• The draft of the presentation will be sent to Consortium members via email prior to the October 28th meeting.
• Consortium members will use this PowerPoint to present the CTSC Imaging Consultation Services at the Radiology Division Heads Meetings within each institution.

3. Imaging Information and Acquisition Liaison Job

• Randy has begun to receive resumes from prospective Imaging Information and Acquisition Liaison
• Carolyn has contacted the HR departments at Harvard and MGH to post the Imaging Information and Acquisition Liaison job.
• Consortium members and personnel within the Radiology Departments at each institution may be able to suggest suitable job candidates.
• Carolyn has also submitted the job description to RSNA. It will be posted on the RSNA website and featured in the December issue of Radiology.
• Randy requests the assistance of consortium members at other institutions to help get the job description posted there through each institutions respective HR department.

4. 2009 meeting schedule

• Randy proposed that the Imaging Consortium continue with the current meeting plan into 2009. This includes continuing our 8:30 - 9:30 am weekly teleconferences and our monthly site visits at Harvard CTSC Central or one of the participating institutions.

5. Consultation Web-page Update

• The Imaging Consultation Service page is due to go live on the Catalyst website on November 18th.
• We are waiting for CTSC Central to approve rotating through several images at the top of the web-page. If it is approved, consortium members will be asked to suggest several additional pictures to display on the website.