Call for Identification of Medical Image Computing Grant Applications
Medical Image Computing is a young field of research. To the best of our knowledge, there is no study section at NIH specializing on this topic. This is in contrast to the well established field of Medical Imaging, which is focused on improving image acquisition and reconstruction and has its own specialized study section.
We would like to raise the visibility of the field of Medical Image Computing (MIC) with the long term goal of initiating the creation of a study section focused on our field. As a positive side-effect of the creation of such a study section, it would improve review scores for MIC grants, since reviewers would be better attuned to MIC content. NIH needs evidence that enough grants on the topic are submitted at sufficient frequency to initiate this process. The typical threshold is around 20 submissions per cycle. Typically, there is first the creation of an ad-hoc study section, which can later be converted to a permanent study section if the stream of applications is sustained over several application cycles.
This is a call to the Medical Image Computing community. When submitting a grant application to the NIH, please include the term Medical Image Computing in your grant summary and the keywords. You don't need to do anything else, just add the term. If, as a community, we can sustain the volume of applications that are labeled like this, then we can lobby for the process of study section formation to begin.
Our goal is to use the existing policies and governance to create a completely valid avenue for Medical Image Computing grant applications to compete against others in this field on equal footing and for the NIH reviewers to select the best science and engineering in this field with the highest potential to improve medical care. This will improve the reviewing system relative to the current state where Medical Image Computing applications are sent to a variety of different study sections and are evaluated by reviewers with core competences largely outside the MIC field.
Actions Requested
- Please include Medical Image Computing in the summary and keywords of all your future grant applications to NIH.
- Review the wikipedia page on Medical Image Computing. Improve the wikipedia page by editing and adding content.
