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National Cancer Imaging Translational Accelerator (NCITA)

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The National Cancer Imaging Translational Accelerator (NCITA) is a national UK-wide medical imaging infrastructure which aims to accelerate the standardisation and translation of cancer imaging biomarkers for clinical use.

Established in 2019 with funding from a CRUK Accelerator Award of up to £10 million over 5 years, the consortium includes nine leading UK medical imaging institutions including University College London, University of Oxford, Imperial College London, King’s College London, University of Manchester, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, University of Cambridge, Newcastle University and University of Glasgow. This unique partnership provides clinical researchers across the UK with infrastructure support for multicentre clinical imaging studies including access to world-class clinical imaging facilities and expertise, quality assurance/quality support and repository data management service, including artificial intelligence (AI) tools and ongoing training opportunities.

The NCITA consortium, through engagement with NHS Trusts, pharmaceutical companies, medical imaging and nuclear medicine companies as well as funding bodies and patient groups, aims to develop a robust imaging biomarker certification process, to revolutionise the speed and accuracy of cancer diagnosis, tumour classification and patient response to treatment. The NCITA leaders work closely with the CRUK Commercial Partnerships team to ensure that new discoveries arising from NCITA’s exemplar projects and other studies supported by CRUK become available to people with cancer. 

Professor Shonit Punwani, UCL is chair of the NCITA consortium and also project lead on the NCITA Exemplar which aims to progress the utility of multiparametric-MRI for adoption by the NHS, through the creation of a novel multiparametric-MRI repository and development of artificial image analysis tools

For more information visit the NCITA website and the CRUK Commercial Partnerships Imaging page. See also the NCITA Comment article published in the British Journal of Cancer.