NCITA are delighted to announce the publication of their Comment article “Introduction to the National Cancer Imaging Translational Accelerator (NCITA): a UK-wide infrastructure for multicentre clinical translation of cancer imaging biomarkers” in the British Journal of Cancer https://www.nature.com/articles/s41416-021-01497-5#Sec1 on Tuesday 27 July 2021.
This Comment article provides a comprehensive overview of the NCITA infrastructure and its goals to establish standardised protocols and locked-down quality-assured processes for clinical imaging biomarker qualification and a federated research data repository for secure data storage and sharing between multiple study sites.
NCITA infrastructure support is available to clinical researchers in academia and industry through NCITA’s study adoption process. International partners are also eligible to apply. While cancer imaging studies are a key focus, clinical research studies in other disease areas involving AI algorithm development, training and validation will also be considered for adoption by NCITA.
NCITA are also engaging with NHS Trusts, pharmaceutical companies, medical imaging and nuclear medicine companies as well as funding bodies and patient groups, to develop consensus guidelines on how the imaging biomarker development pathway can be improved to achieve more efficient translation of quality-assured imaging biomarkers into clinical practice.
Researchers interested in finding out more about NCITA infrastructure support for clinical imaging research studies can contact NCITA by email (ncita.general@ucl.ac.uk) or via the website (ncita.org.uk/contact).