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Experts sought for medical data annotation of potentially malign lesions for the development of a computer-aided prostate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) analysis software

Country of Origin: Germany
Reference Number: TRDE20210222001
Publication Date: 24 February 2021

Summary

An e-health company based in North Germany is developing a software for computer-assisted prostate magnetic resonance imaging analysis (MRI). The solution is based on deep learning algorithms and aims at supporting the healthcare industry via an AI platform. Currently the SME is looking for services agreements with medical data annotation experts who identify and mark the potentially malign lesions in a set of anonymized training cases.

Description

The e-health company based in North Germany is developing a software for computer-assisted prostate magnetic resonance imaging analysis (MRI). The result of these activities is a product that assists radiologists during the analysis of prostate MRI by providing automatically created markings of potentially malign lesions. 



In the current research and development step they aim to train the deep learning algorithms with anonymized cases of prostate MRI along with expert annotations. The outcome of this process are segmentations that are subsequently used as ground truth for algorithm training. 



For generating these high quality ground truth data, experts are sought for two tasks:

Task A: all potentially malign lesions shall be localized by the expert and the geometric center of the lesion shall be marked

Task B: delineation of marked lesions (=outline of lesion boundary) shall be created. The location of a lesion is provided as marking of a central point.

All markings should be created in the axial T2-weighted series, however the information from the other series should be taken into account for the detection of lesions. The data set amounts to 400 cases. 



Three phases are planned for the data annotation process. 

In a first test phase the experts will be asked to provide a test data set of 5 patients for task A and 5 patients for task B. Experts will be asked to detect lesions (task A) and create delineation of pre-defined lesions (task B). The annotations will be compared to a histological gold standard and a feedback about the accuracy will be provided. Remuneration will be based on a lump-sum allowance. 



If the quality targets are met by the experts, negotiation of service agreements for the annotation of the full data set for phase A and/or phase B will follow.



Expressions of interests are preferred to be received until end of March 2021.

Expertise sought

The company is looking for high expertise in diagnosing malign prostate cancer from MRI. The experts need to be able to localize potentially malign lesions, mark the geometric center of the lesions and outline the lesion boundaries of the marked lesions.

Stage Of Development

Under development/lab tested

Requested partner

Several individual experts like radiologists or oncologists or radiology institutions with high experience in MRI and prostate cancer. 

On the basis of service agreements the experts will be expected to annotate data sets based on the localization, delineation and interpretation of potentially malign lesions.