Project description
Smarter AI for brain imaging
Radiology stands to benefit from AI, but progress has been slowed by the need for vast labelled datasets. Additionally, the adaptability of conventional AI tools is limited. Most models struggle to generalise across tasks or patient populations, holding back clinical adoption. With this in mind, the ERC-funded project will develop a visual foundation model trained on over 200 000 brain scans using self-supervised learning. Focused on neuro-radiology, this model will support a wide range of applications, from emergency triage to dementia risk prediction, using minimal labelled data. With open-source tools and large-scale training, the project is paving the way for more flexible, accurate, and accessible AI in medical imaging.
Objective
Medical artificial intelligence (AI) holds immense promise for transforming radiology by introducing advanced diagnostic capabilities. Yet, traditional AI models face challenges like extensive data annotation needs and are task-specific with limited generalizability to different scenarios. This problem of robust and label-efficient generalization continues to be a key translational challenge for medical AI models and has prevented their broad uptake in real world healthcare settings. AI-Next will build on the recent advent of foundation models, providing a unique opportunity to rethink the development of medical AI and overcome the challenges of traditional AI models. At the core of AI-Next stands the development of a state-of-the-art visual foundation model (VFM) that learns generalizable representations from unlabelled radiology scans and provides a basis for label-efficient model adaptation in several applications. The VFM will focus on neuro-radiology and be trained with data at unprecedented scale including >200,000 brain computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging scans from population-based and disease specific cohorts, leveraging self-supervised learning. The VFM will be adapted with a limited set of explicit labels to a range of tasks with clinical significance. This includes the screening and triage of scans for emergency findings, longitudinal disease activity assessment, risk prediction of dementia, forecasting of disease evolution and finally automated radiology reporting. Moreover, the VFM will be employed for image processing tasks, including generating super-resolution images to enhance diagnostic capabilities. Overall, AI-Next will represent a crucial step towards more generalisable, accurate and label-efficient AI in neuro-radiology, offering significant potential for improving diagnostics, clinical decision-making as well as patient outcomes, and its open-source innovations will serve as a blueprint for the broader field of radiology.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences physical sciences optics microscopy super resolution microscopy
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine radiology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine neurology dementia
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
53127 BONN
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.