At the recent SNM 2008, Philips showcased several innovative research projects seeking to improve diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease and cancer treatment planning. (These projects reflect ongoing research only, and the software described is not intended to be commercialized in its current form.)

Computer Aided Diagnosis of Neurodegenerative Disease

Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD)

Researchers from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and Philips Research are combining advanced image processing and computer learning techniques with a database of reference brain scans to examine whether fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-PET images can be interpreted automatically. Such a system could assist clinicians in the differential diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases.

-Therapy Monitoring: The potential of a CAD system to detect dementia-related diseases well before patients begin to suffer symptoms could make it a powerful therapy monitoring tool, as well as an important tool in the development of new drugs to control or cure neurodegenerative diseases of the brain.
-Personalized Medicine: The development of a pathology-based system that can be used to monitor individual patient responses would help doctors to devise patient-specific drug therapies that maximize efficacy while minimizing side effects.


Computer Aided Personalized Cancer Treatment

Treatment Planning and Monitoring
Scientists at Philips Research have developed a software platform that could assist in the patient-specific planning and monitoring of cancer treatment. This new platform can combine image data from multiple imaging modalities (for example, CT, FDG-PET, as well as future imaging modalities) with patient record data such as medical history, pathology results and health status, which may facilitate the early assessment of therapy response and associated clinical decision making. The output from the system would be a comprehensive evidence-based report, based on best-practice treatment guidelines, that could help a tumor board (a group of radiologists and oncologists) to arrive at a recommended treatment protocol for an individual patient.

-Evidence-Based Recommendations: The quantitative measurements extracted from the images are combined with the patient record data and fed into the system's guideline engine, which tries to match the patient data with the guidelines to produce a comprehensive overview of the patient's status and the effectiveness of current therapy. It also generates evidence-based guideline recommendations for next steps.
-Future Advances: Future extensions of the software platform include the incorporation of computer models into the system that will simulate the effect of different therapies on tumor cell growth and metabolism, allowing outcome prediction and therapy optimization via computer simulations. Philips Research will undertake this additional development as part of a European Union Framework Program 7 (EU FP7) initiative called the 'ContraCancrum' project.

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