Imaging biomarkers processing platform

Abstract

This paper presents the preliminary work in a software tool to provide the service of imaging biomarkers quantification for radiologists, supporting a wide variety of biomarkers for several types of acquired images, mainly focused on computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR) and derived image types. The platform can be accessed from every hospital in a shared network, allowing radiologists to upload medical images or select them from the picture archiving and communication system (PACS), and choose the appropriate imaging biomarker for the selected images. Once the images and the biomarker are correctly selected, the post-processing phase will be executed. Then, the platform sends a message to the system administrator in order to attend imaging processes whenever necessary, especially in semi-automatic workflows that need expert interaction. When the biomarker has been obtained, an automatic report is generated, offering several templates to the radiologist for the final report customization. Internally, the system takes care of saving the results on a local database and sending a copy of the report to the source PACS in DICOM Structured Report format. Nowadays, this platform has a collection of eighteen biomarkers that can be applied in several clinical research areas like neuroscience, cardiovascular, thorax, abdomen, pelvis, musculoskeletal or oncology.