The INCISIVE project launches the final prototype of the AI decision support toolbox and federated data repository to improve cancer diagnosis and care

The INCISIVE project was officially concluded, receiving very positive feedback for its results from the European Commission project officer and reviewers. The project delivered the final prototype of an integrated platform with all planned functionalities, making it available to data providers, data users and healthcare professionals, following appropriate authorisation.

El consorci INCISIVE, format per 26 entitats d’arreu d’Europa, ha tingut una presència destacada de professionals de l’àmbit clínic, la IA i la recerca a Catalunya, provinents de la Fundació TIC Salut Social, el Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación i l’Hospital Clínic de Barcelona – IDIBAPS. 

The INCISIVE consortium, made up of 26 entities from all over Europe, draw a notable number of professionals from the clinical field, AI and research in Catalonia, from the TIC Salut Social Foundation, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro National Institute of Supercomputing, and the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona – IDIBAPS. 

From the TIC Salut Social Foundation, the head of the AI Area and technical secretary of the Health/AI Programme of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Susanna Aussó, highlights how “participation in the INCISIVE project has opened door for us into European Commission working groups to determine the common AI strategy and the European Data Space. At the same time, we have succeeded in giving our results continuity, availability, and ensured they are trained and validated within the pan-European cancer imaging infrastructure (Cancer Image Europe).“The Foundation has also led tasks of Explainable AI, interoperability and communication, and contributed to the prototype launch by facilitating the temporary technological infrastructure.

The project coordinator, Gianna Tsakou, from Maggioli Spa, stresses the “excellence” of the project’s multidisciplinary team, and the positive assessment it received from the European Commission, whose report concludes that “the project’s ambitious nature and numerous met KPIs demonstrate its potential for substantial scientific, technical, commercial, and societal impacts”.

Federated data repository

The INCISIVE federated data repository supports the data sharing of more than 5.5 million anonymized interoperable cancer images and accompanying clinical data from more than 11.000 individuals. All this data is coming from 9 distributed data providers, including the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona, providing anonymised prostate cancer data from 380 patients. The repository allows health data use among registered stakeholders in compliance with legal, ethical, privacy, and security requirements for AI-related training and research experimentation.

The repository relies on federated data storage and management, abiding to the highest data privacy and security standards: data holders are free to choose among setting up their own local data node that will interoperate with the platform or using INCISIVE’s central data node for secure data storage and management. The repository is also supported by data sharing mechanisms, covering both technical and operational aspects of data sharing, and complying with legal and ethical norms before data is shared. 

AI toolbox

The final prototype of the AI toolbox provides a set of explainable AI services and pipelines that healthcare professionals can use as decision-support tools withpositive impact on the clinical workflow. It comprises a total of 28 AI models for lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancer. The main decision-support services relate to the classification of abnormalities, patient prioritization, lesion segmentation and localization assistance, cancer diagnosis and staging and risk for metastasis prediction.

The input data to the INCISIVE AI services include imaging examinations (MMG, MRI, US, CT, PET-CT and histopathological images), and clinical metadata (patient demographics, biopsy results, laboratory examination results, tumor and treatment details). The INCISIVE AI toolbox integrates methods and components for explainability of the AI services so that healthcare professionals understand the reasons for the recommendations provided by the AI tools. Moreover, the toolbox integrates components supporting the usability of the AI services, such as image-to-report transformation and Augmented Reality visualization functionalities, thus facilitating the delivery of the AI services’ outcomes to healthcare professionals.

The INCISIVE consortium was coordinated by Maggioli SpA and comprised 26 partners from 9 countries: Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Serbia, Spain and the UK. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952179