Advanced medical Imaging and image analysis is a sine qua non condition towards precision medicine allowing clinicians to screen, diagnose and plan treatments of patients. Despite the advances both in multimodal imaging technologies, involving novel functional imaging techniques, and computer-aided diagnostic and prognostic tools, there is still a gap between imaging information and the underlying molecular and genetic mechanisms of disease. This gap has both clinical and socio-economic consequences since in many cases the available imaging information renders decisions in the clinical management such as the administration of expensive treatments risking under or over-treatment.

To address this issue, recent advances in Radiomics and Radiogenomics focus on high throughput feature extraction from medical images aim to detect and establish meaningful correlations with clinical endpoints as well as underlying genetic and molecular disease markers. Correlating imaging phenotype biomarkers with genetic/molecular information is expected to lead to novel paradigms in decision support systems and accelerate the clinical translation of hybrid pathophysiology signatures able to add precision in the clinical management of chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

To realize this vision, the synergies between medicine and computer science and engineering need to be strengthened in order to ensure the quality, reproducibility and generalization of such studies, to provide means (such as benchmark datasets and tools) for comparing results across studies/clinical sites and account for common problems such as class imbalance and smaller datasets.

This special session is focusing on the above concepts and calls for novel Radiomics, Radiogenomics studies employing AI techniques to address current analysis barriers, enhance performance and accelerate clinical acceptability and translation.

Organizing Committee

Kostas Marias

Head of Computational BioMedicine Laboratory (CBML), Institute of Computer Science, Foundation of Research & Technology-Hellas (FORTH)

Kostas Marias is an Associate Professor in Image Processing at the Informatics Engineering Department of the Technological Educational Institute of Crete and since 2010 he is the Head and Founder of the Computational Biomedicine Laboratory at FORTH-ICS. Previously he was a Principal Researcher at the Institute of Computer Science (ICS-FORTH) since 2006. During 2000-2002, he worked as a Researcher at the University of Oxford and from 2003-2006 as Associated Researcher at FORTH-ICS. He received his PhD in Medical Image Analysis and Medical Physics from UCL Royal Free & University College Medical School working jointly with the University of Oxford, UK. He has coordinated two EC projects on cancer modelling (ContraCancrum and TUMOR projects), and has actively participated in several other EC funded projects developing ICT technology focusing on medical image processing and personalized medicine. He coordinated the development of a wide range of image analysis and modelling tools designed for the clinical setting within the wider Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) EC initiative and has published more than 200 papers in international journals, books and conference proceedings focusing on medical image processing and analysis, biomedical informatics and image-based modelling for personalized medicine.

tel: +30-2810-391672 | website
email: kmarias@ics.forth.gr

Nickolas Papanikolaou

Principal Investigator in Oncologic Imaging at CF, leader of the Computational Clinical Imaging Group, Lisbon Portugal

Nickolas Papanikolaou, PhD, MSc, is a Principal Investigator in Oncologic Imaging at CF and leader of the Computational Clinical Imaging Group. Dr. Nikolaos Papanikolaou studied biomedical engineering at the Technological Institute of Athens while he obtained his Ph.D. from the Medical School of University of Crete on the topic of “Technical Development and Clinical Evaluation of Novel Imaging Techniques of the Gastrointestinal Tract with MRI”. He has been working for Philips Medical Systems from 1991 to 1998, while he joined the MR Clinical Science department in Best, The Netherlands. He has been a research associate of the department of Radiology, University Hospital of Heraklion from 1999 to 2009, and he has been an MR Applications Consultant for Siemens Healthcare from 2002 till today. During the last 25 years he has been invited in several countries to support Philips and Siemens MRI scanners including: Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Cyprus, England, Turkey, Lithuania and Israel. He has published 63 scientific papers in peer reviewed international journals, 15 chapters in international books. He has delivered 72 lectures in international congresses and educational courses. He served as a member of editorial board of European Radiology in the section of experimental radiology, while he was a member of abdominal subcommittee of ECR from 2007-2009. He has been awarded with several scientific prizes and he has received 2 research scholarships from ECR. Finally, he is honorary member of the Spanish Society of Gastrointestinal Radiology (SEDIA). The main focus of his research is development and validation of imaging biomarkers on cancer applications. He recently initiated the development of a Radiomics Network comprising luminary clinical sites in US and Europe to advance research in that area of Radiomics. He is serving as section editor for Radiomics, AI and Machine Learning in Cancer Imaging, the official journal of International Cancer Imaging Society.

Georgios C. Manikis

Computational BioMedicine Laboratory (CBML), Institute of Computer Science, Foundation of Research & Technology-Hellas (FORTH)

Georgios C. Manikis joined the Computational BioMedicine Laboratory (CBML) at the Institute of Computer Science of FORTH in 2010, as an expert in machine learning applications medical imaging. He is a PhD candidate and holds a Master degree in Electronics and Computer Engineering from the Technical University of Crete. He has been working on several national and EU projects for more than 10 years as a research assistant and software developer. His research interests focus on medical image analysis, radiomics, machine learning, deep learning and statistics.

tel: +30-2810-391593
email: gmanikis@ics.forth.gr

Sotirios Bisdas

Consultant Neuroradiologist and MRI Lead in the Department of Neuroradiology at the National Hospital for Neurology in London

Sotiris Bisdas is Associate Professor of Neuroradiology, UCL Institute of Neurology and Lead Consultant Neuroradiologist, The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London. He is Member of the Neuroradiological Academic Unit, convener of the clinical modules on the MSc Advanced Neuroimaging program, and PhD-candidates supervisor. He has received several awards including the Award of the British Institute of Radiology and Siemens Healthineers (2018) as well as the Innovation Award, Olea Medical, France (2016) and has received several grants focusing on precision imaging in Neuro-oncology and radiogenomics. He has been the dead Section Editor for ‘European Journal of Radiology’; ‘Hellenic Journal of Radiology’; ‘The British Journal of Radiology Open’. He has authored 138 peer-reviewed publications (4023 citations, h-index: 38, i10-index: 84) and has given more than 118 scientific oral presentations, keynote presentations, and invited lectures.

email: sotirios.bisdas@nhs.net

Apostolos Karantanas

Collaborating Researcher at Computational BioMedicine Laboratory (CBML), Institute of Computer Science, Foundation of Research & Technology-Hellas (FORTH)

Apostolos Karantanas is currently Professor of Radiology – University of Crete, Chairman of the Department of Medical Imaging/Chairman Scientific Committee-Heraklion University Hospital, Affiliated Researcher in Computational BioMedicine Laboratory and Head Advanced Hybrid Imaging Systems/Institute of Computer Science-Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Member of the Educational Committee and Research Committee of the European Society of Radiology, Member of the Sports Injuries Subcommittee/ESSR, Section Editor “European Journal of Radiology” and Associated Editor “Hellenic Journal of Radiology”. He is chairing the “Committee for Coordination of Academic Institutes” in Crete and is a board member of the “Greek Atomic Energy Commission”. His main research is focused on imaging of musculoskeletal disorders including trauma and emergencies, bone marrow, osteoporosis, sports injuries, osteoarthritis, hip joint disorders, applications of newer MR sequences and advanced models of data analysis focused on Imagenomics and Precision Medicine. He has given more than 550 invited lectures in 32 countries and is a regular faculty member in European Congress of Radiology, IDKD, ISS, Erasmus courses MSK MRI, School of MRI/ESMRMB, ESOR and ESSR. He is the author of more than 240 publications in peer review journals (h index 30/Scopus, 38/Google Scholar-citations 5300), 6 books (3 international), 67 chapters in books and 530 published announcements in international conferences. Prof. Karantanas is a reviewer in 33 Medline journals, Editorial Board in 5 and has been a Guest Editor in 3 issues of Medline journals.

tel: +30-2810-392541
email: karantanas@med.uoc.gr