Pim de Graaf

Amsterdam UMC, location VUMC

In short, Pim de Graaf's research entails the following: 

MRI-based deep learning segmentation and quantitative radiomics in retinoblastoma: a next step towards personalized interventions

'In general, considerable progress is made in personalized cancer therapy. However, in Retinoblastoma, a rare cancer that develops in the eyes of young children, individualization of treatment is complicated, since intraocular tumor-biopsy is contra-indicated. The key to personalized treatment is identifying tumor-subtypes that require a tailored approach with the help of detailed tumor characterization and unravelling tumor-heterogeneity. The Dutch Retinoblastoma Center will initiate multicenter studies between specialized centers for Retinoblastoma treatment within Europe to assess the value of MRI for the detection of genetic subtypes of this rare form of paediatric eye cancer and to improve the detection of risk factors for developing distant metastasis (in particular tumor invasion into the optical nerve). To reach these goals deep learning algorithms for automated tumour delineation will be developed. These delineations will subsequently be used for radiomics analyses to characterize and quantify the tumour phenotype.'

Brief summary of progress / results 2022

After a start-up period, during which hard work was done on the data collection and the obtaining approval for the studies, the first results are coming in. Some of these have already been presented at a major international conference. This one results showed that, using computer-computed features on MRI images, it is possible to distinguish between the classical picture of retinal cancer in children and the more aggressive growing type retinal cancer. In addition, work has started on improving and renewing an automatic segmentation network, whereby different structures of the eye are automatically recognized on MRI images from different hospitals. This network will eventually be able to independently operate certain parts of the eye recognize and tell more about the underlying genetics of the retinal tumors.