Multi-modality Informatics Approach for Early Stage Cancer Diagnosis

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, and is the second leading cause of cancer death among women in U.S. However, current screening methods for early detection of breast cancer often lead to over-diagnosis and subsequent overtreatment, and recent studies estimated that breast cancer was over-diagnosed in 1.3 million U.S. women in the past 30 years. This research project aims at addressing the overarching challenges of distinguishing deadly from indolent breast cancers, which is a critical step towards conquering the problems of over-diagnosis and over-treatment.

In this project, we aim to develop an advanced multi-modality informatics system by integrating the unique and complementary clinical values, provided by tissue histology sections and state-of-the-art omics assays. The expected outcome is a highly generic, efficient and effective multi-modality informatics system for distinguishing deadly from indolent breast cancers.