Bio: Dr. Gee is Professor of Radiologic Science in Radiology and Computer and Information Science, Director of the Penn Image Computing and Science Laboratory, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute-National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering Interfaces Program in Biomedical Imaging and Informational Sciences, and is Co-Director of the Translational Bio-Imaging Center of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, all at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gee’s research interests are broadly in the field of biological and medical image analysis. His team is best known for methods that have enabled population imaging studies, digital atlases, and computational anatomy. The group is recognized, too, for their open-source tools which directly underpin hundreds of published imaging studies across the world every year. Dr. Gee has also been active in enhancing the field’s global impact, especially toward AI-driven healthcare for low resource environments. He is an Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research Distinguished Investigator and Fellow of AIMBE, SPIE, ISMRM, and IEEE.

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Abstract: The utilization of imaging in medicine has led to a rapid increase in the incidental detection of kidney cancer over the last three decades. While most cancers are detected at an early stage (i.e., ≤ 4 cm), treatment of small renal masses thought to represent cancer has not resulted in a substantial decrease in cancer-specific mortality. Data suggest that most of these cancers behave indolently, and therapeutic intervention may not benefit many patients who are more likely to die from other causes. Furthermore, about a third of small renal masses believed to be cancer and resected surgically in the U.S. are histologically benign. Therefore, imaging contributes both to over-diagnosis and over-treatment of renal masses. There is a need for a paradigm shift that emphasizes the diagnosis and prompt treatment of aggressive renal cancers while avoiding interventions in benign renal masses and indolent cancers that are unlikely to affect the patient’s health span.

In locally advanced and metastatic disease, percutaneous renal biopsy is an excellent test for the presurgical characterization of the histologic subtype. However, histologic heterogeneity is common and may challenge more detailed analysis of the tumor characteristics, which is particularly relevant in the choice of systemic therapy. Imaging enables analysis of the entire tumor burden non-invasively and will likely play a complementary role to tissue-based biomarker analysis to assist in therapy selection. Artificial intelligence offers new opportunities to combine and analyze large, complex multi-modality, imaging and tissue-based data to generate predictive and prognostic models in patients with kidney cancer.

Bio: Ivan Pedrosa, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor (tenure) of Radiology, Urology, Advanced Imaging Research Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern). Dr. Pedrosa received his M.D. from the University Complutense of Madrid in Madrid, Spain. He completed his Residency in Radiology at the Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid, Spain, and fellowships in Trauma and Emergency Radiology at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, and Body MRI at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, Massachusetts. From 2002 to 2011, he was an attending radiologist at BIDMC and was promoted to Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School in 2010. In 2011 Dr. Pedrosa joined the Department of Radiology at UT Southwestern as the Chief of MRI. In 2017, he defended his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Oviedo, in Oviedo, Spain. Since 2019, he serves as the Vice-Chair of Research in the Department of Radiology at UT Southwestern although he functioned as the Interim Chair of the Department between March and December 2023. He is the holder of the Jack Reynolds, M.D., Chair in Radiology and Co-Leader of the Kidney Cancer Program at the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Pedrosa has been awarded numerous honors including the Best Teacher of the Department of Radiology (2005) and Norman Joffe, MD Award to the Best All-round Radiologist at BIDMC (2006), Fellow (2011), the Lauterbur Award (2012) from the Society for Advanced Body Imaging (SABI), and both the Golden Apple Award for the Best Teacher (2014) and the Mentorship Award (2021) of the Department of Radiology at UT Southwestern. He has served as the Chair of the Educational and Scientific Body Programs for the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) and the Scientific Committee at SABI. He is currently the President and a member of the Board of Directors at the SABI.

Dr. Pedrosa’s translational research program in genitourinary cancers focuses on implementing novel quantitative imaging techniques for the prediction of aggressiveness, angiogenesis, immunogenesis, and response to novel therapies, primarily focusing on MRI. He has received multiple grants from the National Institute of Health and other funding agencies. Overall, Dr. Pedrosa  has contributed to securing over $30M in research funding to UT Southwestern as a principal investigator (PI), co-PI, or project leader. Dr. Pedrosa has over 260 peer-review publications, reviews, book chapters, and editorials and he is co-inventor of several patents. Dr. Pedrosa is also a member of the American College of Radiology MRI Safety Committee and the Renal Cancer Task Force of the Genitourinary Steering Committee of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).