Posted on: 18 Feb 21
Study aims to investigate correlations between image and serum collagen biomarkers to advance the clinical measurement of progression in fibrotic lung diseases.
Qureight Limited, the digital healthcare company focused on applying AI-enabled lung image analysis in the treatment of severe respiratory diseases and the Royal Brompton Hospital, part of Guys and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, today announced their agreement to apply the Qureight analytics platform to investigate images from patients enrolled in the PROFILE study. The PROFILE (Prospective Observation of Fibrosis in the Lung Clinical Endpoints) study demonstrated that blood serum levels of certain collagen-derived biomarkers are higher in individuals with Idiopathic Lung Fibrosis (IPF) and track longitudinally with progression of fibrosis, predicting mortality for IPF patients in as little as 3 months. HRCT images from PROFILE patients will be analysed using a range of machine learning and diagnostic software methods that enable automatic segmentation and quantification of key image features that are also known to correlate with disease progression in IPF in similarly short periods. Overall, the collaborative research aims to advance disease prediction and further validate novel image endpoints in IPF. Employing AI techniques that interrogate associations between image features and clinical, physiological and biomarker data offers the potential to improve the consistency, accuracy and speed at which IPF disease progression and drug response can be measured and predicted. The PROFILE study represents an important dataset in allowing the possible interrogation of biomarker and image-based data in parallel.
Dr Muhunthan Thillai, Chief Executive Officer, Qureight, said: “We are very pleased to announce this agreement. Both imaging and biomarker approaches have recently demonstrated their potential to transform the clinical study of IPF – a severe respiratory disease with high patient mortality. We have an important opportunity to investigate how image-based biomarkers can impact clinical research and patient care in achieving better outcomes for lung fibrosis patients.”