Quantitative Imaging for Evaluation of Responses to Cancer Therapies (U01) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The NIH grant opportunity PAR-11-150, titled "Quantitative Imaging for Evaluation of Responses to Cancer Therapies (U01)," supports research that improves how tumor response to cancer treatment is measured using medical imaging in clinical trial settings. The central aim is to make imaging-based response assessment more quantitative, reliable, and clinically useful so that it can better inform real clinical decision making, not just exploratory research. The focus is specifically on developing, adapting, and implementing quantitative imaging approaches that can be used in ongoing or planned early-stage clinical therapy trials (Phase 1 and Phase 2). Rather than paying for the clinical trials themselves, this FOA funds the imaging research components that ride alongside those trials, such as the imaging methodology, workflow, and analysis infrastructure needed to extract dependable quantitative measurements.

Projects are expected to work with existing commercial imaging platforms and instrumentation, meaning applicants should generally build practical solutions that can function within real-world clinical environments instead of relying on highly specialized or one-off scanners. The research scope includes developing or refining quantitative imaging methods, standardizing imaging protocols, and creating or improving software tools that enable consistent measurement of therapy response. The quantitative endpoints should be derived from imaging and tied to responses to drugs, radiation therapy, and/or image-guided interventions. In other words, the funded work should concentrate on measurable imaging biomarkers or metrics that track how tumors change with treatment, with an emphasis on approaches that could be validated and used consistently across sites and studies.

Because quantitative response imaging sits at the intersection of oncology, radiology, medical physics, image analysis, and biostatistics, the FOA anticipates that strong applications will be multidisciplinary. It encourages teams that include oncologists along with clinical and basic imaging scientists to ensure the resulting methods are both technically sound and clinically relevant. The opportunity also strongly encourages (but does not require) involvement of industrial partners, reflecting an interest in tools and workflows that can be adopted broadly, integrate with commercial systems, and potentially scale beyond a single institution.

A key structural feature of this program is that awardees will join a broader collaborative effort called the Quantitative Imaging Network (QIN). Through the QIN, funded groups are expected to share ideas, compare approaches, and work toward validation and standardization. This includes not only the imaging measurements themselves but also the supporting imaging metadata, since consistent acquisition parameters, reconstruction settings, and data descriptions are essential if quantitative imaging results are to be comparable across scanners, sites, and trials. In practical terms, the network component signals that NIH is looking for interoperable methods and common standards that can be tested and harmonized across the community, rather than isolated tools that only work within one lab.

The funding mechanism is a U01 cooperative agreement, which typically indicates substantial scientific and programmatic involvement by NIH staff compared to a standard research project grant. The opportunity is listed under NIH and aligns with program areas such as cancer detection and diagnosis research, cancer treatment research, and cancer center support (CFDA numbers 93.394, 93.395, and 93.397). The award ceiling is listed as $500,000, cost sharing is not required, and the opportunity is categorized as discretionary funding within health-related activities. Eligibility is broad and includes many types of organizations, such as universities (public and private), nonprofit organizations (including 501(c)(3) and certain non-501(c)(3) entities), small businesses, for-profit entities other than small businesses, state and local governments, tribal governments and tribal organizations, independent school districts, public housing authorities, and other specified institutions. The eligibility list also explicitly includes certain minority-serving institutions (for example, HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges and universities, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions), faith-based or community-based organizations, and regional organizations. Foreign organizations and non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations are allowed, indicating that international participation is permissible when aligned with the FOA requirements.

In short, this FOA is aimed at accelerating practical, standardized quantitative imaging methods that can be deployed in early-phase cancer therapy trials to measure treatment response more objectively. It prioritizes method development and implementation that fits within clinical workflows, encourages cross-disciplinary and cross-sector collaboration, and requires participation in a network designed to validate, share, and harmonize quantitative imaging data and metadata so the resulting measurements can be trusted and compared across studies.

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