Open Call for EUCAIM – Cancer Images Project

The goal of EUropean Federation for CAncer IMages (EUCAIM) is to build Cancer Image Europe, a pan-European digital hybrid federated infrastructure of cancer-related radiological and nuclear medicine images and related information, ready to be used to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for Precision Medicine. EUCAIM addresses the fragmentation of existing cancer image repositories by building a distributed, federated Atlas of Cancer Images, which will include both common and rare types of cancer. Its mission is to streamline access to de-identified, high-quality real-world data, and foster collaboration among clinicians, researchers, and AI innovators. The project aims to accelerate the development, training, and benchmarking of AI-powered tools for cancer management, empowering healthcare professionals with data-driven tools for diagnosis and treatment, and ultimately enhancing patient outcomes.

Objective

• The objective of the EUCAIM open call is to:
  • Onboard new cancer image data holders, increasing the geographic dimensions, data modalities or cancer targets
  • Include new reliable AI algorithms trained on the cancer image data of the repository.

Scope

• To reach the above objectives, the new beneficiaries will implement data incorporation, scientific and/or clinical use cases.
• A use case refers to a specific scenario or situation in which the Cancer Image Europe platform is used to address a real-life scientific or clinical question where access and re-use of large amounts of cancer data can improve patient outcomes. The integration of use cases into the EUCAIM project will outline the technical, ethical and legal steps involved in the process, and will play a crucial role in defining requirements for the implementation of additional cancer image datasets, tools and AI algorithms to improve clinical outcomes.

Use Cases

• The following use cases are accepted for this call:
  • Incorporation of large amounts of cancer imaging data into the Cancer Image Europe platform for further re-use, which can be leveraged to address relevant clinical questions (either into the central repository or through the federation of local repositories)
  • Development, training, benchmarking and/or validation of AI algorithms
  • Clinical use cases addressing a specific question (e.g. identification of imaging biomarkers)

Funding Information

• The total maximum budget available for this call is 3,852,000 EUR (1,926,000 EUR EC contribution).
• The indicative proposed budget is 214,000 EUR per beneficiary. This includes 7% indirect cost and 50% co-funding rate, i.e. 107,000 EUR EC contribution per beneficiary. However, this does not preclude the submission/selection of proposals requesting other amounts. It is envisaged to invite approximately 18 new beneficiaries to join the EUCAIM consortium. The new beneficiaries will receive funding under the same co-funding conditions as consortium partners (i.e., 50% of their costs must be co-funded by the prospective beneficiaries), after formal inclusion in the EUCAIM consortium through an amendment to the Grant Agreement.
• Duration
  • Applicants are expected to implement their proposed work within the duration of the EUCAIM project, which is scheduled to conclude in December 2026. The prospective implementation duration for applicants is therefore expected to be between 18-24 months.

Who can Apply?

• Applicants must be legal entities and may belong to one or both of the following groups:
  • Data holders: organisations that supply the data.
    • A data holder represents any legal person or entity, who has the right, obligation, or capability to make certain data available for research purposes (i.e. hospitals or healthcare providers, academic institutes, research institutes, private companies, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), data repositories, regional biobanks, clinical centres, cancer screening programmes, public entities, pharmaceutical companies and data altruism initiatives). Data holders will contribute with data either by; (a) becoming a federated node or (b) transferring anonymized data directly to the Central Repository.
  • Data users wishing to develop, train, benchmark and/or validate AI algorithms using the curated data in the Cancer Image Europe platform.
    • Data users may include:
      • Researchers with a clinical scientific question from the real world that can be addressed through the use of the Cancer Image Europe platform. In this call, applications focused on the development, training, and validation of AI algorithms to answer a specific clinical need (use case) will be accepted (for example, for the identification of imaging biomarkers or the assessment and prediction of response to treatment). Details on requirements for access to and use of the data should be described in the application (local use or federated processing).
      • Private companies and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) developing AI tools for improving diagnosis and prevention and wishing to train and/or validate their tools on external datasets.

For more information, visit EUCAIM.