Imaging biomarkers (IBs) are integral to the routine management of patients with cancer. IBs used daily in oncology include clinical TNM stage, objective response and left ventricular ejection fraction. Other CT, MRI, PET and ultrasonography biomarkers are used extensively in cancer research and drug development. New IBs need to be established either as useful tools for testing research hypotheses in clinical trials and research studies, or as clinical decision-making tools for use in healthcare, by crossing 'translational gaps' through validation and qualification. Important differences exist between IBs and biospecimen-derived biomarkers and, therefore, the development of IBs requires a tailored 'roadmap'. Recognizing this need, Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) assembled experts to review, debate and summarize the challenges of IB validation and qualification. This consensus group has produced 14 key recommendations for accelerating the clinical translation of IBs, which highlight the role of parallel (rather than sequential) tracks of technical (assay) validation, biological/clinical validation and assessment of cost-effectiveness; the need for IB standardization and accreditation systems; the need to continually revisit IB precision; an alternative framework for biological/clinical validation of IBs; and the essential requirements for multicentre studies to qualify IBs for clinical use. ; Development of this roadmap received support from Cancer Research UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant references A/15267, A/16463, A/16464, A/16465, A/16466 and A/18097), the EORTC Cancer Research Fund, and the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (grant agreement number 115151), resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) companies' in kind contribution. ; Peer-reviewed ; Publisher Version
Australian Research Council ; International Science Linkages program of the Commonwealth of Australia ; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, Department of Science and Technology, India ; Science and Engineering Research Board, India ; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India ; Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad ; Conselleria d'Economia i Competitivitat ; Cultura i Universitats of the Govern de les Illes Balears ; Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter - Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research ; National Science Centre of Poland ; European Union ; Royal Society ; Scottish Funding Council ; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration ; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund ; Lyon Institute of Origins ; National Research Foundation of Korea ; Industry Canada ; Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation ; National Science and Engineering Research Council Canada ; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation ; Carnegie Trust ; Leverhulme Trust ; David and Lucile Packard Foundation ; Research Corporation ; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ; Conselleria d'Educacio ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: 1362895 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006285/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000962/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K000845/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K005014/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L003465/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000938/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/N000064/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000946/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000954/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 Gravitational Waves ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006269/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J000019/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/I006242/1 Gravitational Waves ; In this paper we present the results of the first low frequency all-sky search of continuous gravitational wave signals conducted on Virgo VSR2 and VSR4 data. The search covered the full sky, a frequency range between 20 and 128 Hz with a range of spin-down between -1.0 x 10(-10) and +1.5 x 10(-11) Hz/s, and was based on a hierarchical approach. The starting point was a set of short fast Fourier transforms, of length 8192 s, built from the calibrated strain data. Aggressive data cleaning, in both the time and frequency domains, has been done in order to remove, as much as possible, the effect of disturbances of instrumental origin. On each data set a number of candidates has been selected, using the Frequency Hough transform in an incoherent step. Only coincident candidates among VSR2 and VSR4 have been examined in order to strongly reduce the false alarm probability, and the most significant candidates have been selected. The criteria we have used for candidate selection and for the coincidence step greatly reduce the harmful effect of large instrumental artifacts. Selected candidates have been subject to a follow-up by constructing a new set of longer fast Fourier transforms followed by a further incoherent analysis, still based on the Frequency Hough transform. No evidence for continuous gravitational wave signals was found, and therefore we have set a population-based joint VSR2-VSR4 90% confidence level upper limit on the dimensionless gravitational wave strain in the frequency range between 20 and 128 Hz. This is the first all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves conducted, on data of ground-based interferometric detectors, at frequencies below 50 Hz. We set upper limits in the range between about 10(-24) and 2 x 10(-23) at most frequencies. Our upper limits on signal strain show an improvement of up to a factor of similar to 2 with respect to the results of previous all-sky searches at frequencies below 80 Hz.