Medical Physics Seminar – Monday, May 2, 2022
Research in the time of COVID: Collaborative imaging research on local, national and international scales
Martin Ebert, PhD
Professor, Director of Physics Research
Institution: Radiation Oncology, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital; and School of Physics, Mathematics and Computing, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
In the era of precision medicine, imaging (radiology, nuclear medicine) is now rivaling genomics, providing the additional benefits of ease of access and information on spatial heterogeneity. Simultaneously, the need for a rapid response to the COVID pandemic has demonstrated just how versatile and adaptable data and its access needs to be. This presentation will reflect on imaging analytics activities being undertaken by the speaker at local and national levels, describing some Australian clinical trials focusing on oncology. The national infrastructure being used to collate and enable rapid access to imaging data will be described, with that infrastructure built to facilitate Australia’s growing imaging, analytics and theranostics industries. The presentation will consider the potential for international cooperation that could accelerate the more rapid discovery and translation of imaging biomarkers. The role of ethics shall be considered in translating computational approaches that threaten to remove humanity from precision medicine, together with the role physicists have in incorporating ethics principles in practical implementation of the associated technologies.