“RSNA is extremely proud to be part of the MIDRC effort,” said Curtis Langlotz, M.D., Ph.D., RSNA Board liaison for information technology and annual meeting. “It will build a valuable repository of data for research to address the current pandemic and will serve as a model for how to collect and aggregate data to support imaging research.”
TCIA is a service provided by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to the cancer imaging research community that de-identifies and hosts a large archive of medical images of cancer accessible for public download.
In recognition of the urgent need for access to COVID-19 related imaging data sets for research, NCI is dedicating a portion of TCIA resources to curate and host free and open access to imaging data from patients with COVID-19. RSNA partnered with TCIA to leverage the infrastructure and processes it has in place to make these data publicly available. These data will also be incorporated into MIDRC when its data platform is fully in place in early 2021.
Radiologists have played a pivotal role in managing the pandemic, particularly when other testing methods are unavailable or when clinicians seek imaging data to inform treatment decisions. The RSNA COVID-19 AI Task Force hopes that RICORD will serve as a definitive source for COVID-19 imaging data by combining the contributions and experiences of medical imaging specialists and radiology departments worldwide.
The RICORD data collection pathway enables radiology organizations to contribute data to RICORD safely and conveniently. It provides sites with guidance for data sharing and serves to standardize exam parameters, disease annotation terminology and clinical variables across these global efforts. Importantly, it connects to sustainable storage infrastructure via the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
The RSNA COVID-19 AI Task Force will continue to update and expand both the volume and variety of data available in RICORD. A collection of COVID-19 negative chest CT control cases is in the pipeline for publication soon, along with a labeled set of 1,000 COVID-19 positive chest X-rays. An even larger set of CT and X-ray images has been submitted to RICORD and is currently being processed.
Sites interested in learning more or contributing data should visit the RICORD resources page.
From early on, RSNA has been a global leader in disseminating information and the latest research on COVID-19 through its scientific journals, webinars, podcasts and guidance documents. Additional RSNA COVID-19 resources may be found at RSNA.org/COVID-19.
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