A Day With Our Industrial Partners

CREATE-MIA, the NSERC CREATE Program in Medical Image Analysis, McGill’s first industrial CREATE and one of the first in Canada, is reaching its midway point. This event will give our trainees, industrial partners, and co-applicants an opportunity build upon their commitment and dedication to maximize  CREATE-MIA’s potential for preparing  its trainees for success in their future careers.

The schedule for the day epitomizes the spirit of CREATE-MIA. Trainees will learn about:

• Industrial research and innovation in medical imaging in Quebec in a talk by Mme. Diane Côté, CEO, MEDTEQ, the Québec Consortium for Industrial Research and Innovation in Medical Technology
• Medical imaging research from a clinical perspective from  Dr. Benoit Gallix, Chair, Department of Radiology, McGill
• CREATE-MIA’s partner companies, their products, why they’re a great place to work, what types of skills they look for in potential new employees, their perspectives on what makes or breaks an job interview.

Trainees will also formally practise their interviewing skills in a series of mini-interviews with the industrial partners and will have ample opportunity throughout the day to practice their elevator pitches, networking and communication skills, and business etiquette.

The schedule for the day is as follows:

Directions in imaging in Québec

Mme. Diane Côté, CEO, MEDTEQ

Diane Côté is CEO of the MEDTEQ Industrial Research and Innovation Consortium whose objective it is to accelerate the development of innovative medical technologies by supporting collaborative projects developed by teams of industrial and academic partners. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé. She is also Vice-Chair and a member of the Executive Committee of MedDev, the Ottawa-based Medical Device Commercialisation Centre, a Canadian centre of excellence for the commercialisation of research dedicated to medical technologies.

Ms. Côté was previously Vice-President - Quebec of MEDEC, the national association created by and for the Canadian medtech industry. During her work in industry, she was CEO of a medical technology company specialising in state-of-the-art mathematical modeling and neural networks for risk management purposes. She worked at IBM as a member of the Sales and Communications management team. She also lead numerous mandates in strategic planning, financing and partnerships at Innovitech, a consulting company focusing on new technologies and on the development of innovative economic models.

Monitoring tumour response to treatment and tumour phenotype by non invasive imaging

Dr. Benoit Gallix, MD, PhD, Professor of Radiology and Medicine and Chair, Department of Radiology, McGill University

Abstract

Due to the emergence of personalized medicine and targeted treatment, the requirement of quantitative image analysis has risen along with the increasing availability of medical data. Tumour responses to treatment are still largely assessed from imaging measurements of reductions in tumour size. However, this can take several weeks to become manifest and in some cases may not occur at all, despite a positive response to treatment. There has been considerable interest, therefore, in non-invasive techniques for imaging tissue function that can give early evidence of response. These can be used in clinical trials of new drugs to give an early indication of drug efficacy, and subsequently in the clinic to select the most effective therapy at an early stage of treatment.

Radiomics refers to the high throughput extraction of a large number of quantitative and minable imaging features, assuming that these features convey prognostic and predictive information]. It focuses on optimizing quantitative imaging feature extraction through computational approaches and developing decision support systems, to accurately estimate patient risk and improve individualized treatment selection and monitoring. Quantitative imaging features, extracted from medical images, are being extensively examined in clinical research. But different issue need to be solved:  optimum protocols for image acquisition and reconstruction have to be identified and harmonized, segmentations have to be robust and involve minimal operator input,  features have to be generated that robustly reflect the complexity of the individual volumes and informatics databases that allow incorporation of image and other information from electronic medical report.

Biography

After completing Medical School and his Radiology Residency at the University of Montpellier in 1995, Dr. Gallix joined McGill in the Department of Medical Imaging for a clinical fellowship in abdominal imaging as well as a subsequent turn as a Visiting Professor within McGill’s Department of Radiology. He then returned to the Montpellier University Hospital and Medical School, where he remained for 15 years, during which time he was appointed full time professor (tenured) in 2006.He has 20 years of experience in academic radiology environments.

Dr. Gallix’s work has focused on abdominal imaging, both diagnostic and interventional, with a special interest in liver cancer. His main interest is developing new imaging techniques for the detection of cancer, as well as methods to assess early response of tumours to treatment.