Researchers funded by NCI are studying ways to improve the use of CT in cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment. NCI also conducts and sponsors clinical trials that are testing ways to improve CT or new uses of CT imaging technology. Some of these clinical trials are run by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, one of five groups in NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network. The American College of Radiology Imaging Network, which is now part of ECOG-ACRIN, performed the National CT Colonography Trial, which tested the use of CT for colorectal cancer screening, and participated in the NLST, which tested the use of CT for lung cancer screening in high-risk individuals
NCI’s Cancer Imaging Program (CIP), part of the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD), funds cancer-related basic, translational, and clinical research in imaging sciences and technology. CIP supports the development of novel imaging agents for CT and other types of imaging procedures to help doctors better locate cancer cells in the body. In addition, CIP maintains the Cancer Imaging Archive, which is a library of medical images of cancer, including low-dose CT images, that are accessible for public download. This library has been used extensively by outside researchers in developing computer-aided diagnosis to help radiologists interpret CT images, for example, in lung cancer screening.