Workshops
Theranostics Workshop - Monday 28th November 2023
Our ‘STFC Cancer Diagnosis Network+ Theranostic Workshop took place on Monday 28th November 2023. We secured six wonderful speakers who delivered thought provoking talks and an insight to the latest scientific developments in cancer theranostics. We also built in plenty of networking opportunities to the schedule and supported our Early Career Researchers via a poster session with prizes.
Speakers
Dr Glenn Flux, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and Institute of Cancer Research, ‘‘Thera(g)nostics – should we treat with knowledge or be led by the nose?’
Dr Ana Denis-Baclear, National Physical Laboratory, ‘Towards traceability in nuclear medicine theranostics’
Dr Daniel McGowan, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, 'Imaging with SPECT and PET – advances in image reconstruction’
Dr Sean Collins, National Physical Laboratory, ‘PRISMAP – building a European network for medical radionuclides’
Prof Tzany Wheldon, University of Birmingham, ‘Alternative production of terbium isotopes at the University of Birmingham’
Prof Wolfgang Weber, Technical University of Munich, ‘Theranostics – a sure cure of cancer after 100 years?’
Networking
We are proud that over the last three years our STFC Cancer Diagnosis Network membership has continued to grow year on year. Our workshops are a perfect opportunity to meet with colleagues from a broad range of backgrounds and expertise, to network and build potential multidisciplinary collaborations. Refreshments, lunch and table discussions were scheduled throughout the day to encourage active networking. We were thrilled to see so many new faces and meet in person as a community!
Archived Events
STFC Cancer Diagnosis Network+ Data Science Techniques Applied to Imaging and Bioinformatics Workshop: 5th October 2021
Our STFC CDN+ 'Data Science Techniques Applied to Imaging and Bioinformatics’ virtual workshop took place Tuesday 5th October 2021. Our most popular event to date with four speakers, breakout groups, funding call announcement and networking opportunities.
Overview:
Speaker 1 - Ben Glocker, Imperial College London, ‘Current status of Machine Learning for Medical Imaging in Cancer Diagnosis’
Speaker 2 - Jorge Cardoso, Kings College London (Founder of a Start Up) ‘Working with the NHS; How to apply AI, Big Data and Image Analysis in cancer diagnosis’
Speaker 3 - Alison Kennedy, STFC Hartree, ‘Working with the Hartree Centre in data science challenges for cancer diagnosis’
Speaker 4 - James Nightingale, Durham University, ‘Cosmology and Cancer – Astronomical Statistics in Healthcare’
A recording of the talks is available here
Ben Glocker, Imperial College London
Jorge Cardoso, Kings College London
Alison Kennedy, STFC Hartree
James Nightingale, Durham University
STFC Cancer Diagnosis Network+ Showcase Workshop: 6th July 2021
A virtual mid term showcase event, to launch our next funding call, demonstrate progress taking place in our sucessfully awarded projects to date and provide more information to potential applicants and new members about who we are and what we do!
Agenda:
12.30 – Welcome, funding announcement - Prof Laura Harkness Brennan
12.40 – Introduction by Chairs; Sarah Bugby, University of Loughborough and Matt Wilson, STFC
12.45 – ‘A methodology for breast density measurement using the HEXITEC pixellated spectroscopic technology’, Oakley Clark, University of Surrey (CDN+ PhD funded project)
13.00 – ‘Portable hybrid gamma-optical camera for quantitative 3D precision imaging in cancer diagnosis’, Yangfan Jiang, University of Loughborough (CDN+ PhD funded project)
13.15 – ‘Development of radiation detectors for medical imaging using opaque scintillators’, Joshua Porter, University of Sussex (CDN+ funded Scoping Study)
13.30 - ‘Modelling of pulse pile-up and deadtime effects on quantitative imaging potential of x-CSI systems at medically relevant fluxes’, Dr Oliver Pickford Scienti, The Institute of Cancer Research (CDN+ funded Proof of Concept)
13.45 – ‘Machine Learning System for Decision Support and Computational Automation of Early Cancer Detection and Categorisation in Colonoscopy’, Prof Bogdan Matuszewski, University Of Central Lancashire (CDN+ funded Proof of Concept)
14.00 – ‘sCMOS as an alternative to EMCCDs for high performance gamma imaging’, Dr Phil Marsden, Unitive Design (CDN+ funded Proof of Concept)
14.15 – ‘Compact beta detectors for radio-guided glioblastoma biopsy and recision’, Dr Bjoern Seitz, University of Glasgow (CDN+ funded Proof of Concept)
14.30 – Workshop close
A recording of the event can be accessed here.
Oakley Clark, University of Surrey
Yangfan Jiang, University of Loughborough
Joshua Porter, University of Sussex
Dr Oliver Pickford Scienti, The Institute of Cancer Research
Prof Bogdan Matuszewski, University Of Central Lancashire
Dr Phil Marsden, Unitive Design
Dr Bjoern Seitz, University of Glasgow
Workshop 2 - STFC Cancer Diagnosis Network+ Challenge Workshop 2: Early Diagnosis (Nov 2020)
Our first virtual session, took place on Tuesday 17th November 2020. It was a half day session that included high profile speakers, question and answer session, a facilitated breakout, an opportunity to engage with key industrial exhibitors and funding announcement.
A bio of each speaker can be found here. Presentations from our speakers can be viewed via the links below:
Workshop Chair - Prof Nandita de Souza, Welcome and introduction to the event
Workshop Co-Chair - Prof John Lees, Panel Question and Answer session
Speaker 1 - Dr Linda Mahon Daly, GP, Colchester
‘Early diagnosis matters- a GP perspective’
Speaker 2 - Prof John Field, University of Liverpool
‘Implementation of Lung cancer LDCT screening: Challenges and solutions’
Speaker 3 - Ms Clare Schilling, University College Hospital, London
‘Challenges in the diagnosis and treatment of head and neck cancer’
Q & A session - access an assortment of the questions here.
Facilitated Breakout Sessions - Each breakout room was given two topical questions to discuss. The questions related to the speaker presentations and 'cancer challenges' raised. Click here to review the feedback gathered from each group.
Workshop 1 - STFC Cancer Diagnosis Network+ Challenge: Precision and Quantitative Imaging (Jan 2020)
Our first Challenge Workshop took place on Monday 20th January 2020, at College Court Conference Centre, Knighton Road, Leicester, LE2 3UF.
A full schedule of the day can be found here. The event focusd on cross collaboration to find new ways to tackle cancer diagnosis via precision and quantitative imaging. There were also opportunities to network during the day via facilitated breakout sessions. We received a lot of positive and constructive feedback from the event, which has been collated and can be viewed here. We are listening to our members and will be acting upon the feedback gathered to make future events even better.
Facilitated networking sessions took place during the day. Output notes created by the groups have been collated here.
We were delighted to feature expert lectures from the following esteemed speakers:
Workshop Chair - Dr Dimitra Darambara, Welcome and introduction to the event
Dimitra is Senior Team Leader in Multimodality Molecular Imaging at the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. She leads the development of novel imaging techniques and instrumentation to identify, visualise and quantify molecular and cellular characteristics of cancer. She has established a translational research laboratory focusing on quantitative molecular imaging, including photon-counting multi-spectral X-ray imaging. She collaborates with detector and healthcare industries and has secured >£3M funding. She is a RAE Biomedical Engineering Panel member, elected member of the IEEE Nuclear and Medical Sciences Council, immediate past Chair of the IOP Medical Physics Group and will Chair the 2019 IEEE Medical Imaging Conference (MIC). Dimitra has recently been awarded the 'Phillips Award 2019', by the Institute of Physics (IOP) for her significant contributions to the IOP through a number of special interest groups and championing the medical physics discipline.
Speaker 1 - Dr Malene Fischer, King's College London, 'Cancer diagnosis using precision and quantitative imaging'
Dr Malene Fischer is a Senior Clinical Lecturer in PET (Positron Emission Tomography) imaging and Consultant in Nuclear Medicine within King’s College London. She specialises in clinical physiology and nuclear medicine, undertaking research in PET/CT and oncology since 2001, particularly in lung cancer diagnosis and staging. Both her clinical and research work aims to improve functional imaging for precision medicine in both the diagnosis and treatment of patients with cancer, including the use of hybrid imaging technologies such as PET/CT, PET/MR and SPECT/CT.
Speaker 2 - Prof Nigel Allinson, MBE, University of Lincoln, 'Proton CT in Proton Beam Therapy: Getting New Technology into the Clinic'
Prof Allinson holds the Distinguished Chair of Image Engineering at the University of Lincoln, with a research portfolio that includes imaging devices/systems, computer vision and machine learning. He has received several high profile honours for his work, including an MBE for Services to Engineering (2012). He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and has received their J J Thomson Medal for Electronics (2018), Innovation Prizes for Electronics (2012) and Model-based Engineering Prize (2014) . He has a successful track record in taking technologies through to market and has co-founded a number of start-up companies including “ Image Sensor Design and Innovation Ltd, which provides custom imaging systems through design of novel CMOS imaging devices. He has attracted significant research funding from sources including EPSRC and the Wellcome Trust and has published over 350 scientific papers/patents.
Speaker 3 - Dr Calum Williams, University of Cambridge, 'Development of multispectral image sensors for early-stage cancer diagnosis'
Dr Calum Williams is a researcher in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. In collaboration with Dr. Sarah Bohndiek, his multidisciplinary research applies concepts in nanophotonics to the illumination and detection sides of imaging, in order to unify different modalities in a single device. This has a great potential to change the way cancers are imaged using light, leading to better diagnostic accuracy and patient outcomes. Calum obtained a BSc (Hons) in Physics from Cardiff University (2011), an MPhil (Dist.) in Micro & Nanotechnology at the University of Cambridge (2012), and in 2013 joined the Photonic Systems Development Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Cambridge. He completed his Ph.D. (Engineering) in 2017, with doctoral research in plasmonic nanostructures for enhanced optical devices. He became a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College in 2018 and a Wellcome Trust Junior Interdisciplinary Fellow in 2019.
Speaker 4 - Prof Phil Allport, University of Birmingham,
Professor Phil Allport leads the Birmingham Instrumentation Laboratory for Particle physics and Applications (BILPA). He is an expert on radiation-hard detectors for use at hadron colliders and has pioneered the use of p-type substrate sensors for these environments. Phil was the Upgrade Coordinator of the LHC ATLAS experiment from 2011-2015, during which time he had responsibility for defining the 20 year planning for the experiment. He continues to serve as a member of the ATLAS Executive Board and is a leading international advocate of the High-Luminosity LHC (LHC Upgrade programme). Phil holds several STFC and EPSRC grants employing HL-LHC detector technology developed with UK industry for medical applications and is a founder member of the Proton Radiotherapy Verification and Dosimetry Application (PRaVDA) consortium. He is a core member of the STFC Global Challenge Network+ in Advanced Radiotherapy.
Launch Event - STFC Cancer Diagnosis Network+ (Sept 2019)
The launch event took place at the University of Liverpool, 9th September 2019. The following talks were given and can be found here:
Welcome and introduction to the network, Dr Laura Harkness-Brennan, University of Liverpool
Overview of challenge themes
Multimodal techniques, Prof Paul Marsden, Director of PET medical physics at King's College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ PET centre
Precision and quantitative imaging, Dr Ramona Woitek, Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge Department of Radiology
Early Diagnosis, Prof Nandita deSouza, Lead academic radiologist at the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital
Application of data science techniques to cancer diagnosis, Dr Mathieu Hatt, French National Institute of Health and Medical Research
Overview of STFC capabilities
STFC capabilities for cancer diagnosis, Dr Andrew Boston, Reader in Nuclear Physics at the University of Liverpool
Applying an astrophysics modelling tool to improve diagnosis and treatment of cancers, Prof Tim Harries, Head of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Exeter
From X-ray astronomy to nuclear medicine, Dr Sarah Bugby, STFC Innovation Fellow at the University of Leicester
Quantum Entanglement PET, Prof Daniel Watts, Chair in Hadron and Nuclear Physics at the University of York
Computational analysis of imaging and genomic data for cancer diagnosis, Dr Martyn Winn, Group Leader for Computational Biology at STFC Scientific Computing
Bench to Bedside, Dr Marlies Goorden, Delft University of Technology