Cancer Data Science Pulse

NCI recently hosted a two-day workshop with more than 600 developers, researchers, and data scientists from the United States, Canada, and the European Union. Participants addressed some of the challenges of removing personal information from medical images—a process called de-identification. This blog features highlights from the workshop.

Meet Drs. Ajay Aggarwal and Anant Madabhushi, two grantees funded by NCI’s Center for Global Health’s Affordable Cancer Technologies (ACTs) Program. These ACTs-supported grantees are using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop tools that can be used in a variety of conditions and health systems around the world.

If you can see it, you can treat it. In this blog, Dr. Baris Turkbey, senior clinician in NCI’s Molecular Imaging Branch, Center for Cancer Research, explores the field of theranostics. He describes how artificial intelligence and data are helping researchers “see” cancer in a new way, resulting in a more precise way of targeting cancer treatment.

Dr. Vivian Ota Wang shares her perspectives on data bias and outlines ideas for making data more equitable, fair, and useful to the greatest number of people, all of which would benefit cancer research.

In honor of National Lung Cancer Awareness Month, we’re highlighting the “data deets” (details) for the National Lung Screening Trial, a large-scale effort that collected imaging data for more than 53,000 heavy smokers. In this blog, we’ll cover the research that drove this data, specific metrics about the data set, how to access it, and some of the exciting data science projects using the data.

Ever wonder what it’s like to work on a data ecosystem? Meet software engineer Ming Ying, and website specialists Hannah Stogsdill and Ambar Rana, as they describe what it’s like to design, develop, implement, and maintain NCI’s Integrated Canine Data Commons.

As NCI recognizes Breast Cancer Awareness Month this October, we highlight several data science resources to assist in your breast cancer research.

Watch our time capsule video to learn about the current status of the field and new technologies that are sure to be important as we embark on the next era of cancer data research.

Meet the people who are breaking new ground in the data science field, whether it’s a new tool, a new model, or a completely new way of using data. Here, we’re featuring Svitlana Volkova, Ph.D., chief scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. She’ll describe how she’s using “foundation models” to give scientists and analysts a new tool for unleashing the power of artificial intelligence (AI).

Whether you are in the data science field, interested in developing computational solutions for clinical oncology, or a clinical researcher, we’ve curated a list of data sets, tools, and learning resources to showcase how these disciplines can and are working together to empower cancer research.