EC commits 35M euros to cancer detection

The European Commission (EC) has pledged a hefty amount to promote the development of image recognition systems to diagnose the most common forms of cancer.

The EC is offering 35 million euros through the Horizon 2020 research program to accelerate diagnosis and subsequent referrals, resulting in better outcomes for cancer patients.

The need for the funding is even more visible in light of a report from the U.K. Royal College of Radiologists, which found that radiologists are in short supply and oncology staff shortages result in delayed cancer diagnoses and inadequate emergency diagnostics. The deficiency comes as the demand for diagnostic imaging escalates. In England alone, there were an estimated 32 million x-ray, CT, and MRI scans performed in 2017 and 2018.

Applicants for funding will need to contribute to data storage by building a repository of high-quality, interoperable, anonymized or pseudoanonymized datasets of annotated cases, according to the commission. The EC has set a deadline of 13 November.