Open Source Imaging Consortium (OSIC) Launches $55,000 AI Competition to Help Pulmonary Fibrosis Patients

HOLLAND, Mich., July 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Open Source Imaging Consortium (OSIC) announced today the launch of the $55,000 OSIC Pulmonary Fibrosis Progression, an AI-focused challenge to predict lung function decline in people living with pulmonary fibrosis. The competition is administered by Kaggle, the world's largest data science community platform, and runs through October 6, 2020.

OSIC – a global, not-for-profit collaborative effort between academia, industry and philanthropy – was created to enable rapid advances in the fight against fibrosing interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), and other respiratory conditions including emphysema. Its mission is to bring together radiologists, clinicians and computational scientists from around the world to improve imaging-based approaches to diagnosis, prognosis and therapy.

IPF has no known cause and no known cure, and is characterized by scarring of the lungs leading to an irreversible decline in pulmonary function that is easily identified on computerized tomographic (CT) chest imaging. People living with IPF have an average life expectancy of three to five years after diagnosis. The first Kaggle challenge will focus on this devastating disease.

Challenge participants will be given a CT scan of an IPF patient's lungs and asked to use machine learning techniques to predict the severity of lung function decline, as measured by spirometry. The Pulmonary Fibrosis Progression challenge is led by Dr. Simon Walsh, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London & OSIC's lead radiologist, and Dr. David Barber, University College London & OSIC's lead computational scientist.

"The heterogeneity of outcome in this disease complicates clinical decision making for individual patients, increasing their anxiety and fear," said Dr. Kevin Brown, National Jewish Health & OSIC's lead pulmonologist. "Success in this challenge will help clinicians provide clarity to our patients, and ultimately improve treatment trial design and accelerate the clinical development of novel therapies."

"OSIC was created to bring divergent groups together to look at new ways of fighting complex lung disease," said Elizabeth Estes, the consortium's executive director. "In addition to utilizing expertise from academia, industry and philanthropy, we wanted to introduce clinicians to the broader artificial intelligence and machine learning community to see if new eyes and new tools could help us move forward, faster. We are excited to see the progress that can be made for patients all over the world."

OSIC is supported by a myriad of collaborative academic and industry institutions, including founding members Boehringer Ingelheim, Siemens Healthineers, CSL Behring, FLUIDDA, Galapagos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Université de Lyon, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli, and National Jewish Health. All members work in pre-competitive areas for mutual benefit and, most importantly, the benefit of patients.

For more information on OSIC or the Pulmonary Fibrosis Progression challenge, please visit www.OSICILD.org.

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SOURCE Open Source Imaging Consortium (OSIC)