AACI Cancer Imaging Initiative

AACI Cancer center leaders recognized biomedical imaging’s increasingly pivotal role in laboratory and clinical cancer research and treatment of cancer patients, which led AACI to establish its cancer imaging initiative. This AACI initiative explores how cancer centers can partner more effectively with radiologic and other research organizations, private industry, and NCI to develop new research and clinical trials opportunities for imaging and facilitate collaborative imaging-related activities involving cancer centers and their partners.

The cancer imaging group’s initial activities included surveying AACI cancer centers to determine their imaging capabilities and organizing a workshop for cancer center directors and radiology chairs (co-sponsored by AACI and the ACRIN Network) to identify barriers to productive collaboration between cancer centers and radiology departments and to identify potential initiatives for the promotion of imaging studies in cancer research. Among the workshop’s recommendations was the concept of an oncologic imaging response assessment team (IRAT)—a cancer center shared resource that would improve communication and increase interactions between cancer centers and radiology departments.

AACI’s cancer imaging group adopted IRAT, and AACI supported the development of a preliminary plan for an IRAT project, which led to NCI’s funding IRAT teams of radiologists, nuclear medicine physicians, physicists, oncologists, and computer scientists in eight NCI-designated cancer centers. The national IRAT network comprises the NCI-funded IRAT sites; new IRAT corresponding members; NCI leaders from the cancer centers and cancer imaging programs; and AACI, the network’s communications coordinating center.

The IRAT Network

NCI-designated cancer centers of excellence and the most scientifically sophisticated radiology departments in the world are the hub of the IRAT network. NCI’s IRAT initiative is a collaborative effort to foster the growth and application of anatomic, functional, and molecular imaging to cancer research and treatment. The IRAT project is advancing the role of imaging in assessment of response to therapy; increasing the application of quantitative anatomic, functional, and molecular imaging endpoints in clinical therapeutic trials; and establishing oncologic IRATs as formal shared resources in cancer centers. IRAT sites are developing mechanisms to integrate their IRAT teams into the protocol planning process, as well as to increase clinical collaborations between imaging experts and oncologic investigators—collaborations that identify new imaging research opportunities in cancer clinical trials.

Why join the national network?

The IRAT network, with AACI and NCI support, offers corresponding membership to AACI cancer centers and their related radiology departments whose imaging programs, or oncologic IRATs, meet the inclusion criteria. Corresponding membership is an outreach strategy through which established IRAT sites and cancer imaging programs can share their methods and models.

The IRAT network meets monthly (by teleconference) to discuss site-specific research challenges and solutions; multi-institutional research opportunities; and IRAT sites’ progress in the several areas: integration of the IRAT into the concept/protocol planning process; implementation efforts as a shared resource; enhanced imaging engagement in current and future Phase I, II, and III clinical trials; strategies for communication of goals and objectives of the IRAT (intramural/extramural); and data-sharing activities.

IRAT network members belong to IRAT subcommittees (PET/CT, MR, Quantitative Imaging Analysis), which meet bi-monthly; attend the IRAT annual workshop and other national meetings; receive space for their site on the IRAT website; have access to the website’s intramural section for members only that holds the IRAT’s library of meeting summaries, reports, protocols, and research studies; use the IRAT distribution list serve and receive advance notice of multi-institutional research activities.

IRAT Steering Committee

AACI/ACRIN Special Imaging Workshop
Recognizing that cultural barriers exist between radiology departments and cancer centers, AACI and the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN) sponsored and organized a special imaging workshop for cancer center directors and academic radiology chairs from major U.S. academic institutions. The workshop took place October 7, 2003 at the American College of Radiology in Reston, Va.

The workshop was organized by Dr. Robert J. Gillies, chair of the AACI Cancer Imaging Initiative, director of cancer imaging and molecular imaging at the Arizona Cancer Center, and professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and radiology at the University of Arizona; and Dr. Bruce Hillman, ACRIN chair and professor of radiology at the University of Virginia Health System. This workshop generated the concept for IRATs. Please find the final report of the workshop: AACI/ACRIN Special Imaging Workshop (217k PDF).