Imre Noth, MD, the Dudley F. Rochester Professor of Medicine, and chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, in the School of Medicine’s Department of Medicine, was awarded a grant from the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for $3.7 million in funding over the next 5 years. He will investigate the performance of radiomic markers alone and in conjunction with select molecular markers for disease progression and response to therapy in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.
Dr. Noth’s investigation will provide an ancillary study to the ongoing PRECISIONS pharmacogenomics multicenter trial testing N-acetylcysteine in IPF over 24 months in a double blind randomized controlled trial of patients with a favorable TOLLIP genotype. This award will support obtaining CT scans and radiomic analysis for the PRECISIONS trial cohort and an additional UVA and University of Chicago prospective cohort in conjunction with collaborators at National Jewish Hospital and University of Chicago.
Radiomics is a broad term that describes computational extraction of high-dimensional quantitative features from images to enable quantitative analysis using machine learning and artificial intelligence in lieu of naked eye readings. The development of this kind biomarker could accelerate drug development, and provide objective clinical diagnostics and prognostics by leveraging clinical CT scanning.
This project uses cutting-edge approaches to establish and quantify radiomic features from the CTs in these patients. Radiomic markers such as data texture analysis will be used alone and in conjunction with established genetic and molecular markers to establish performance characteristics for prediction of disease progression and response to therapies in both the trial and clinical practice. Completion of the project will determine where to position radiomics for application in clinical decision making.
Additional collaborators include Steve Humphries PhD, and David Lynch, MD, at National Jewish Health; Mary E. Strek, MD, and Deji Adegunsoye, MD, at University of Chicago; and John Kim MD, Shwu Fan Ma, PhD, and Yong Huang MD, MS, at the University of Virginia.
Filed Under: Research