Indian cancer scientist develops software for cancer patients

Tiwari, who is from Madhya Pradesh, presented her new research before at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting recently.

"With Obama administration s push for personalised therapy, a pressing need in precision medicine is to identify patients with GBM who are suitable for specific clinical trials based on their tumour characterisation, instead of a 'one-size-fits-all' treatment," a media release said.

Unfortunately, this has not been feasible so far in the absence of reliable non-invasive and quantitative measurements regarding patient prognosis (likely outcome of the disease) in GBMs, Tiwari noted.

Tiwari and her team have shown on 62 patients that these computer-extracted features from tumour margins and its surrounding areas on MRI are together predictive of GBM outcomes, the press release said.

So far such an approach of investigating imaging features from normal-appearing areas outside of tumour margins has not been investigated.

Using computer techniques developed by Tiwari and her team, subtle information can be gleaned from normal-appearing regions (at tumour periphery) to allow for the ability to reliably and non-invasively stratify patients based on their survival and can ultimately guide personalised therapeutic clinical trials in GBM.

Tiwari graduated from SGSITS in Indore and moved to United States to get a PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering.