The project RadioaVal, financed under Horizon Europe, implements the first international, clinical validation study of radiomics-based prediction of NAC-treatment response from breast MRI. Breast cancer is now the most common cancer worldwide, responsible for almost 30% of all cancers in women. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) has shown promise in reducing mortality for advanced cases, but the therapy is associated with a high rate of over-treatment, as well as with significant side effects for the patients. The project will introduce new tools to enable transparent and continuous evaluation and monitoring of the radiomics tools over time. The RadioVal study will be implemented through a multi-stakeholder approach, taking into account clinical and healthcare needs, as well as socio-ethical and regulatory requirements from day one.

The project consortium consists of a broad partnership, combining universities, clinics and research institutions from different countries and regions of the world to provide all the necessary data in different socio-economic settings. To test applicability as well as transferability, the validation will take place in eight clinical centres from three high-income EU countries (Sweden, Austria, Spain), two emerging EU countries (Poland, Croatia), and three countries from South America (Argentina), North Africa (Egypt) and Eurasia (Turkey).

The project builds on the repositories, tools and results of five EU-funded projects from the AI for Health Imaging (AI4HI) Network, including a large multi-centre cancer imaging dataset on NAC treatment in breast cancer.

To keep up-to-date with the latest project developments follow RadioVal on Twitter, and visit the project https://radioval.eu/.