Dr. Kenneth Gilhuijs and colleagues have received funding from the Hanarth Foundation for the TOSCA project

Explainable artificial intelligence to find hidden lymph node metastases

Dr. Kenneth Gilhuijs and colleagues have received funding from the Hanarth Foundation for the TOSCA project. TOSCA aims to tailor the triage of patients with early-stage oral cavity carcinoma to surgery or biopsy of the sentinel lymph node. This will be done by analyzing the preoperative MRI images of the patient using an artificial intelligence.

Gilhuijs: “It is important for the quality of life and survival of these patients that the AI quickly and with very high certainty determines whether there are hidden lymph node metastases in the area so that the patient can only be referred directly to surgery in those cases. This prevents double operations and unnecessary morbidity. For acceptance by oncologists and patients, it is essential that the AI can explain this triage well.”

The research will be carried out in a multidisciplinary context by a team from four different departments at the UMC Utrecht: the Image Sciences Institute (Kenneth Gilhuijs), Head and neck surgery (Remco de Bree), Radiotherapy (Mariëlle Philippens), and Radiology (Jan-Willem Dankbaar).

Explainable Artificial Intelligence to Better Assess Effects of Immunotherapy

Dr. Bart de Keizer and colleagues have received funding from the Hanarth Foundation to use explainable artificial intelligence to more accurately assess the effect of immunotherapy on metastatic renal cell carcinoma based on PET/CT images.

De Keizer: “It is difficult to distinguish between disease progression and pseudoprogression on PET/CT images early after starting immunotherapy. Artificial intelligence may be able to help us with this. If we can better asses which patients actually have progressive disease, it may be a reason for the oncologist to start a potentially more effective therapy earlier.”

The research will be carried out in a multidisciplinary context by a team from four different departments at the UMC Utrecht: Radiology/Nuclear Medicine (Bart de Keizer), Image Sciences Institute (Kenneth Gilhuijs), and Britt Suelmann (Medical Oncology). In addition, Radboud UMC, VUmc and AMC will also be participating in the research.