MAASTRO clinic

The number of people diagnosed with cancer will continue to rise in the coming years. In order to improve the prospects for this group, it is important to offer a personalized treatment. As tumors are never the same, the current “one size fits all” treatments are not effective. This issue is a major challenge for the medical field.

A new image analysis, Radiomics, could provide a solution. Radiomics is an advanced method for analyzing large amounts of medical image data. In combination with clinical and genetic parameters, this may lead to a better prediction of the response to specific therapies. Moreover, this will help in early stage to detect for which patients the treatment is effective and what drugs are most appropiate. Please see the animation below in which the method is explained.

Four medical universities (Maastricht UMC, Radboudumc, UMC Groningen and ErasmusMC) and eleven national and international industrial partners have formed a consortium named ‘Radiomics STRaTegy’. This project received € 1,5 million funding from the Dutch ‘STW Perspectief’ program to develop a platform in the coming 5 years that will serve as fundament for Radiomics applications for lung cancer, prostate cancer, head- and neck cancer. A very good result for the STRaTegy partners and Hezelburcht’s Life Sciences team!

Radiomics – Non-invasive stratification of tissue heterogeneity for personalized medicine
Main applicant: Prof.dr. P. Lambin, Maastricht UMC