The role of the CVC in the fight against Covid-19 and lung cancer

La Vanguardia -in its printed edition- and Univadis Spain, featured the CVC research aimed to develop a digital biopsia that may be used in the diagnosis of Covid-19 and lung cancer. Members of the Interactive Augmented Modelling for Biomedicine (IAM4B) leaded by Dr. Dèbora Gil and Dr. Carles Sánchez, in collaboration with researchers from the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) leaded by the Dr. Antoni Rosell, Thorax Area Clinical Director, were using a technique called radiomics for the diagnosis of lung cancer combining PET and TAC scanners.

 

However, with the Covid-19 pandemic emergence, they tried to transfer all the knowledge they accumulated during their studies in cancer lung to Covid-19, concretely to the early detection of microstrokes provoked by bilateral pneumonia asociated to Covid-19 infection. For achieving this purpose they used again radiomics with TAC and SPECT (instead PET) scanners. The system has been retrospectively tested with 63 Covid-19 patients for the first pandemic wave and 70 non-Covid-19 patients, including healthy controls and non-Covid-19 pneumonia (bacterial pneumonia), reaching a 93% accuracy in the detection of Covid-19 microinfarcts. The results are therefore very encouraging. You can read the full articles here (in Spanish): Digital biopsia (La Vanguardia) and Univadis España   This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 712949 (TECNIOspring PLUS) and from the Agency for Business Competitiveness of the Government of Catalonia.