Strand unveils image database for cancer cure

Strand Scientific Intelligence of Strand Life Sciences Tuesday unveiled an image database for better diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients.

The city-based Strand subsidiary developed the Curie Image Database (CID), an image analysis and management platform, with the Paris-based Curie-Cancer of Institut Curie, a private foundation formed by Marie Curie (1867-1935) - the first women Nobel laureate.

"We have developed the image database using our Avadis platform to enable 250 scientists at Institut Curie and 10 other collaborating institutions across Europe to manage heterogeneous imaging data and complex analysis workflows," Strand chief executive Vijay Chandru said in a statement here.

Strand has built an advanced genome sequencing-based diagnostic platform for oncology.

"We will also explore with Institute Curie an advanced platform that integrates genomic signatures of cancers and imaging data for better diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients," Chandru said.

As an image management system and an interactive research tool, the CID will allow data and analysis sharing for multidisciplinary projects between teams from different labs and institutes.

"The database will be able to handle the exponential growth and complexity of scientific and biomedical images generated by advanced microscopy systems," said Jean Salamero, scientific director of cell and tissue imaging facility at Curie-Cancer.

Funding by a French network of institutions enabled the partners (Strand & Curie) to link the database to a secure storage infrastructure for image processing on dedicated clusters.

"We have contributed to the technology developed by Strand, whose roots are in India, as such a partnership project may help treatment of cancer," Curie-Cancer director Damien Saluze said in the statement.