a 4TU High-Tech for a Sustainable Program on Health and Vitality

PRECISION MEDICINE entails a paradigm shift from a one-size-fits-all to a tailored and personalized approach in medicine. This is relevant for early diagnosis and to deliver the right treatment in the right way at the right moment enabling a better prognosis for patients. It holds the promise of improving quality of life and, simultaneously achieving a reduction of health care costs.

AGING POPULATION

In the coming decades, our aging population and the expected increase of people with chronic disease will pose an increasing burden on society. There is therefore an urgent need to develop new preventive and new therapeutic strategies for common age-related diseases. Tailored prevention requires an understanding of the earliest stages of disease in combination with the identification of persons who are at risk. Tailored therapy relies on methods for accurate diagnosis and prognosis.

MULTISCALE FUNCTIONAL IMAGING

State-of-the-art physics-driven clinical imaging techniques, like CT, MRI, optical and ultrasound imaging, can provide different structural and functional information at high resolution. Integrating all the information from multiple modalities at multiple spatial and temporal scales for a patient-specific assessment is an extremely challenging problem.

PERSONALIZED TREATMENT

Tailored therapy relies on methods for accurate diagnosis and prognosis. Recent research has shown that image-based techniques are among the most promising of the available technologies to improve diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment selection. The application of sophisticated imaging technology in the context of large studies, combined with the use of advanced data-driven approaches including deep learning holds the current promise of precision medicine, i.e. individualized prognosis, and treatment tailored to the individual patient.