This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is issued by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to invite research project - cooperative agreement (U01) applications which are expected to enhance the value of quantitative imaging (QI) in clinical trials for prediction and/or measurement of response to cancer therapies

Objective: Projects proposed in response to this FOA are expected to focus on one of two possible ways to enhance QI methods for prediction and/or measurement of response to therapy:

1. Need for validated QI methods or imaging standards: Development, optimization, and validation of state-of-the-art QI methods that have the potential to be incorporated into future clinical trial settings (single site phase 1 or 2 clinical trials).

2. Validation of QI Methods in Clinical Trials: Emphasis on the need to extend initial software tool development and optimization to analyze performance in the multisite clinical trial (phase 3), where multiple platforms are used for data collection. This may involve evaluation of a range of multimodal imaging approaches, harmonization of image data collection, analysis, display and clinical workflow methods across imaging platforms, or testing their performance across different cancer sites.

Within the scope of this FOA, the important issues to be considered are:

- Clinical Data Collection.

- Importance of Quality Control for QI Methods.

- Optimization of Software Tools for targeted cancer problems.

- Metrology Tools.

- Development and Optimization of QI Methods and Software Tools for phase three trial data sets.

Under this FOA, the NCI will not support:

- Any aspect of the coordination, administration, or functioning of any clinical trial, or correlative studies;

- The development of any imaging hardware components or imaging systems, including hardware for correlative studies;

- The use of prototype imaging platforms/instruments for data collection; and

- The development of new laboratory assays.

Funding scheme: Application budgets for direct costs up to $500,000 per year may be requested within a maximum project period of 5 years.

Deadlines:

i. VHIR's internal deadline: September 26, 2014

ii. Official deadline: October 05, 2014

More information: HERE