Precision Imaging for Early Detection and Targeted Treatment Monitoring in Pancreatic Cancer

With a five-year survival rate of only 3% for the majority of patients, pancreatic cancer is a global healthcare challenge. By the time of diagnosis over half of pancreatic cancers are metastasized. The dire disease situation reflects our inability to diagnose pancreatic cancer early and to effectively treat it. Our failure to diagnose the disease early results in part from the inaccessibility of the organ, difficulties in detecting small pancreatic lesions by conventional imaging approaches, and a poor understanding of the spectrum of heterogeneity in pancreatic cancer. Single time point, single site biopsies cannot assess entire tumor while multiple biopsies at several time points are not feasible in clinical routine. Limitations of invasive sampling may be addressed with non-invasive imaging that captures morphologic and functional information about the entire tumor in space and, if repeated, in time. Radiomics has the potential for "whole tumour virtual sampling" using a single or serial non-invasive examinations in place of biopsies. By approaching images as data able to be mined, instead of merely pictures in conventional radiology, quantitative imaging allows for further information to be extracted from medical images as well as for global assessments across large patient populations. Therefore, these new quantitative approaches hold the promise of detecting pancreatic cancer characteristics that the naked eye alone cannot perceive from conventional medical imaging, opening new doors for personalized medicine in pancreatic cancer. To date, no study has evaluated the value of radiomics at macroscopic (in vivo 1.5T/3TMRI) and microscopic (ex vivo 9.4TMRI) scale for early cancer detection and targeted treatment monitoring. Specifically, in this project, the objective will be developpe a model to capture imaging-based tumor heterogeneity with multiscale radiomics approach by obtaining the mirror tumor image at in vivo MRI, ex vivo MRI at histology. This imaging model giving a perfect virtual histology tumor representation will be secondary implemented on routine in vivo clinical MRI for early cancer detection and treatment monitoring. Successful completion of this proposal will lead to a comprehensive non invasive characterisation of pancreatic cancer and will be a game changer in patient management.