Center for Radiology Research Resources Receives Funding to Become Central Imaging Resource

According to the Masonic Cancer Center Clinical Trials Office at the University of Minnesota, over 228 grants or proposals originate outside of the U of M Medical School Department of Radiology annually and require radiology resources that range from hardware, software and lesion-quantification to radiologist interpretation.

In order to create a central system to serve the M Health Fairview joint clinical enterprise (JCE) in which imaging is handled proactively and facilitated smoothly with paid radiologist expertise, Drs. Alexander McKinney, Anil Chauhan, Shamar Young and Bharathi Jagadeesan, with help from Research Administrator Jill Novitzke, developed a proposal to establish the Center for Radiology Research Resources (CRRR).

The proposal was submitted to the Medical School’s Academic Investment program and has been approved for funding with nearly $1 million in year one for the startup phase and over $200,000 in year two. The grant will fund radiologist and physicist time, staff, software and equipment.

By creating CRRR, there will be one, easy-to-navigate process where proposed protocols will be reviewed and then the study will be assigned a designated radiologist to work with the study team to schedule and provide research reads in a timely manner. In addition to reads, radiology expertise and recommendations can be woven into all phases of research from the design phase of grant submissions and the onboarding phase of industry trials to the post-approval phase of the clinical trials. 

“The impact of CRRR has the potential to go miles,” said Dr. McKinney, “This project can enable multiple pathways to enhance future grant submissions, serve as a large imaging data biobank to aid researchers in understanding treatment responses and prognostication of particular diseases and lay groundwork for research for the Medical School as a whole and for multiple individual departments to obtain their goals.”