The Dutch screening programme offers a biennial mammographic examination to asymptomatic women from 50 to 75 years. Since the implementation of screening, the incidence of early stage invasive breast cancer has increased several-fold, without a substantial decline in advanced stage breast cancer incidence. This suggests overdiagnosis of early lesions. At the same time, some breast cancers are detected at an advanced stage, when cure is no longer an option. Consequently, overtreatment of women might occur for 'early' indolent cancer, whereas other cancers are treated 'too late', despite screening.
The IMAGINE study aims to optimise screening referral practice, by finding and internally validating image features, individual and in combination, of breast cancer that are predictive of the risk of recurrence. We hypothesize that image features determined by conventional and deep learning methods, on one or more screening mammograms, will allow for better risk assessment of a lesion identified at screening. This information will help the screening radiologist to optimise referral decisions, enabling timely detection of potentially lethal cancers, while in case of indolent disease referral might be prevented or delayed.
The IMAGINE study will be performed in collaboration with a consortium of national partners. The PhD student will work closely with the postdoc at Radboudumc (working on image features), but also with other partners of the project (in particular the National Cancer Institute/Antonie van Leeuwenhoek hospital (working on pathology subtypes) and University Medical Center Utrecht (working on prognostic models)).
Tasks and responsibilities - Supporting data collection of diagnostic mammograms and pathology data;
- Collecting the tissue blocks from the labs and coordinating staining of histologic slides;
- Statistical data-analysis to develop the image feature-based prognostic models;
- Interacting with all members of the consortium to ensure multidisciplinary input in interpretation of the results;
- Writing scientific publications and preparing presentations for (inter)national conferences.