The Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH – https://www.forth.gr/en/home/) was founded in 1983. It is the premier multidisciplinary research institution in Greece with well-organized facilities, highly qualified personnel and a reputation as a top-level research institution worldwide. FORTH joins the EUCAIM initiative with two groups. The Computational Medicine Laboratory (CBML – (https://www.ics.forth.gr/cbml) of the Institute of Computer Science, Coordinator also of the ProCAncer-I project (https://www.procancer-i.eu/) and the Unit of Medical Technology and Intelligent Information Systems (Medlab – https://medlab.cc.uoi.gr/) of the BioMedical Research Institute.
Both laboratories participating in EUCAIM have established a tradition of internationally acknowledged excellence in conducting high‐level R&D work and in developing innovative computer methods and tools in the area of medical and biomedical engineering and informatics, e‐health, m‐Health, and medical imaging. The laboratories are staffed with specialised scientific and technical personnel and possess state of-the-art equipment. Activities cover important research and development areas, taking into consideration new perspectives, emerging fields of research and technological challenges worldwide.
The Unit of Medical Technology and Intelligent Information Systems (Medlab) is a highly innovative and self-contained research unit active in the fields of Biomedical Engineering and the development of Intelligent Information systems. It has an internationally acknowledged excellence in conducting high quality scientific research and developing innovative Information Technology (IT) applications, products and services. Most of the Unit activities are based on international collaborations in the framework of European and Nationally funded projects. MedLab’s research activities cover a variety of subjects and they are classified into the following domains: Multiscale modelling of human organs, biomedical engineering, processing and analysis of big datasets with medical data, wearable systems for monitoring and management of chronic diseases and intelligent information systems. Medlab has been the technical manager of several successful European Projects. Currently, the Unit is the Coordinator in the Horizon 2020 projects INSILC, TAXINOMISIS, HOLOBALANCE.
The Computational BioMedicine Laboratory (CBML) is a multidisciplinary research team comprising Engineering, Radiology and Oncology Professors, Senior Researchers, Post-Docs and PhD students dedicated in developing novel ICT and AI technologies in the wider context of precision medicine. The lab has achieved an impressive track record in project participation and technology innovation related to, amongst others, a) the effective integration, management and querying of multi-level biomedical and health data for supporting clinical trials based on integrative/multi-level data, b) the semantic interoperability of biomedical data tools and models for enhancing biomedical knowledge discovery and AI modelling, c) the understanding of the genetical and evolutionary basis of diseases and the interplay between random stochastic processes and adaptive forces that affect the genetical state of populations or species through high-throughput data analysis of biological organization, d) the optimization of diagnosis and treatment through the use of novel medical imaging analysis tools and predictive models, and e) the advancement of medical image analysis through novel image-based modelling and radiogenomics approaches complemented by the development of complex machine learning statistical predictive modelling frameworks in order to facilitate the clinicians in diagnosis and treatment planning.
Role of institution in the project
FORTH Co-Leads WP5. It is also leading the activities in developing guidelines for data federation, processing, management and node technical set up (T5.1) and T5.2.1 – Definition of a Common Data Model and hyper – ontology for data interoperability in EUCAIM.
Also, FORTH is a contributor to T6.2, providing to the EUCAIM analysis toolbox tools for feature extraction, radiomics calculation and segmentation, dimensionality reduction and feature selection, and ML based predictive models for Prostate Cancer clinical unmet needs.
FORTH is also contributing to the development of the required core services of the platform (T4.2), with emphasis on Traceability Services.
