This list is mostly based on the white paper that was developed by a gorup of international experts after an event organised by the European Commission in fall 2005.

VPH: ICT Technology for biomedical research

Data processing

• Open source toolkits for the automatic translation between digital storage formats of biomedical data, and implementations of portable standardised data representation to facilitate data sharing and data fusion.
• Methods for the efficient processing of large amount of biomedical data, including knowledge-based image segmentation and labelling, automatic mesh generation methods, feature extraction algorithms, elastic registration methods, statistical shape modelling and morphometrics, computer aided diagnosis, pattern recognition and automatic classification methods

Modelling

• Methods to include sources of uncertainty and to compute the range of validity, including tools and techniques for integrating parameter range of experimental values, level of evidence and missing data
• Toolkits for biomedical data mining, statistical shape analysis, biostatistics, and generic statistic analysis that operate efficiently on large databases of biomedical images and measurements
• Novel methods for mesoscale modelling, multi-domain modelling, hierarchical reconstruction and embedding, hierarchical parameter transfer methods, and data fusion
• Applications of concurrent computing to the modelling of human physiology, including the modelling of massively interacting entities as in the immune system, multiscale organ functions, of multi-systems metabolic processes, agent-based modelling of cellular processes, multi-level stochastic aggregation models of cellular adaptation
• ‘Living simulations’ (linking simulations to instruments with mutual interaction) Effective access to VPH resources
• Data representation and Biomedical cross-level ontologies. Projects should include a large scale deployment of these knowledge management methods to existing or newly established large collections of biomedical data
• Advanced interactive visualisation and explorative fusion of multimodal biomedical data, including virtual reality and augmented reality environments to search and explore large collections of biomedical data
• New perceptual (visual, tactile, etc.) representations of uncertainty, multiple overlapping spatial fields, and of datasets spanning over multiple dimensional scales, providing effective ways to explore large collections of biomedical data
• Systematic clinical trials aimed to identify the most effective representation of complex biomedical measurements/images as a function of the clinical domain and of the specific clinical task involved Infrastructures
• Grid infrastructures for High Performance Computing (HPC) (for mesoscopic simulations), High Throughput Computing (HTC) (for parameter space explorations), Database federation and integration (for data disclosure), problem solving environments (for complex systems) simulations
• Health Grids represent an access to distributed data sources, but many hospitals are reluctant to let the information flow outside the hospital bounds. For a large-scale deployment of Health Grids, and thus for opening an attractive business, it is important to leverage security up to a trustworthy level of confidence that could release a generalized access to data from the outside
• Support and infrastructures for large-scale collaborations such as deployments studies for testing and validation to ensure user acceptance and collaborative research

Cross program topics

Methodologies

• Ethical, normative and quality assurance aspects in verification and validation of VPH models to be used in the clinical practice
• Standardisation policies for the VPH, including development of new standards, completion and deployment of International standards, policies for the Europe-wide adoption of standards
• Toward a technological and legal framework for Europe-wide sharing of large collections of clinical data
• Business models, sustainability and impact analysis for long-term VPH initiatives Data collection
• Creation of large collections of quantitative biomedical data on shape, structure, vascularisation and innervations function, that define the normality ranges of these measurements over a population of healthy human subjects, or the abnormality ranges for groups of human patients affected by the same pathology. Collections should contain the same measurement over a large population, or a large set of different measurements over a single subject, or a combination of both
• Creation of databases of biomechanical and biophysical properties of whole human bodies or of their organs, tissues, and cells, measured in vivo or ex vivo, that provide a complete mapping of these properties over the entire body, or a relevant sub-region, and which include other clinically relevant sources of population variability, such as age, sex, regional phenotype, common genetic traits, etc.
• Creation of large, publicly shared collections of human functional data (including but not limited to medical imaging, motion analysis, electromyography, electrocardiography, etc.) complete of all meta-information required to use these data in modelling activities, including information on the subject, the data collection process, and the physical/environmental conditions under which the function has been recorded
• Novel methods for the collection of quantitative biomedical data. This includes any quantitative method including molecular imaging, diagnostic imaging, biophysical and biomechanical measurements, etc. Preference will be given to those methods that provide the simultaneous measurement of disparate physiological quantities, and/or that span over multiple dimensional scales

Standards, Proof of Concept, Pilots and Deployment Projects

• Standards, benchmarks and protocol for laboratory and clinical validation of complex multiscale models of human physiology
• VPH proofs of concept: projects aimed to deploy VPH technology to solve domain-specific problems that clinically or industrially relevant
• Usability and clinical efficacy of VPH-based solutions