Joining forces for AI-powered imaging to save lives: European Cancer Imaging Initiative shaping the future of AI in radiology and cancer care

European Cancer Imaging Initiative is one of the flagships of the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan (EBCP). The Cancer Image Europe Platform under deployment by the EUCAIM project (funded from the DIGITAL programme, 36 million EUR, 50% co-funding rate) is at the cornerstone of the Initiative.

Cancer Image Europe is a robust and trustworthy platform for researchers, clinicians and innovators to access diverse cancer imaging data from EU-level and national hospital networks and research repositories, enabling development, testing and piloting AI-driven technologies. By making large amounts of high-quality data accessible, ready and usable for AI research and innovation, Cancer Image Europe will accelerate the development of AI-based cancer imaging and management solutions, contributing to more precise and faster diagnostics, clinical decision-making, and accurate treatment for cancer patients. 

The event was an occasion to discuss major milestones achieved by the EUCAIM project: by December 2024, the central hub of the Cancer Image Europe infrastructure has been set up and the technical validation has been completed. The infrastructure currently links up 57 imaging datasets covering nine cancer types of over 47,000 subjects. 50 AI tools are available within the experimentation platform to 86 registered users. Important steps were taken to align the platform with the developments under the EHDS regulatory framework.

By the end of 2026, more than 100,000 cases and 60 million images are expected to be available through the Cancer Image Europe platform. The infrastructure will involve at least 30 distributed data providers from 15 countries, allowing clinicians, researchers and innovators to collaborate on clinical studies and validation of AI algorithms in a fast and efficient way. The secure infrastructure will allow federated learning of AI algorithms, in respect of all applicable regulatory and privacy requirement and sovereignty of data providers.

Participants discussed future European perspectives for advancing trustworthy AI in radiology and oncology, including in the context of the European AI Strategy and the recently adopted European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation. Moreover, the 19 new EUCAIM project partners were introduced and a number of platform use cases were discussed in more detail.

Key discussion highlights

AI innovation for cancer imaging data

The Cancer Image Europe platform will contribute to the progress of secondary use of cancer imaging data for AI innovation, in view of the ongoing national implementation of the recently published EHDS Regulation. The discussion on the role of Cancer Image Europe platform in the EHDS framework will continue also in the DEP-funded SHAIPED project, which started on 1 March 2025 and which will be a pilot demonstrating its interplay with the European Health Data Space.

Public health policy

The European Cancer Imaging Initiative will also play in role in public health policy, in particular the context of the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan (EBCP), and its flagship initiative on cancer screening. The 2022 Council Recommendation on the EU Cancer Screening Scheme sets out very ambitious targets in relation to offering cancer screening to eligible EU population. While the EUCanScreen Joint Action will develop guidelines and tools for implementing AI in cancer screening, the European Cancer Imaging Initiative can help provide evidence for AI use in breast, lung and prostate cancer screening, and foster AI uptake in cancer screening programmes. The role of AI in supporting radiologists conducting cancer screening was highlighted by Carlo Catalano, Chairperson of the European Society of Radiology Board of Directors, in his keynote speech.

Lorena Boix Alonso, Deputy Director-General for Health and Food Safety at the European Commission said:

“If we progressively align this type of projects like EUCAIM or EUCanScreen with the HealthData@EU infrastructure of the European health data space, then we can bring cancer data at the forefront and make their reuse one of the first success stories of the European health data space.”

Digital transformation of healthcare

The Cancer Image Europe platform will contribute to the digital transformation of healthcare towards personalised cancer care and wider adoption of AI in healthcare. Specifically, under the leadership of Spain, representatives of 11 Member States are discussing the possible establishment of an Cancer Image Europe (EUCAIM) EDIC (European Digital Infrastructure Consortium).

Juan Fernando Muñoz, General Secretary of Digital Health, Information and Innovation at the Spanish National Health System, Spanish Ministry of Health said:

“To reach its potential, it's imperative to ensure the long-term sustainability of EUCAIM. A project of this scale can not only rely on temporarily funding cycles. It must evolve into a permanent European digital infrastructure. To achieve this Spain with the support of France and Latvia is leading the group of Members States to establish our European digital infrastructure consortium EDIC.“

An ecosystem for relevant stakeholders

The importance of creating an ecosystem and joining forces among all relevant stakeholders as the only way to preserve European competitiveness and to innovate in Europe was stressed by Thomas Skordas, Deputy Director-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology at the European Commission. He recognised that the ecosystem around the Cancer Image Europe platform is starting to take shape, stressed the importance of cooperation with the Member States and welcomed the submission of the EDIC pre-notification by Spain, Latvia and France in January 2025, encouraging other Member States to get involved.

Multi-disciplinary collaboration

A multi-disciplinary collaboration is important to ensure successful implementation of the European Cancer Imaging Initiative and fostering AI uptake in healthcare. This was reiterated by Carlo Catalano and during the final session of the event which featured the Joint Statement of the Thematic Network led by the European Society of Radiology and EUCAIM, endorsed by over 80 organisations. The importance of cross-sector cooperation is also emphasised in the recently published review of the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. The framework created by EUCAIM fosters multi-disciplinary collaboration, making it more efficient to conduct multi-country collaborative projects and AI validation studies, in respect of applicable data protection rules.

Conclusions and next steps

160 representatives from health ministries, digital health agencies, hospitals, cancer research institutes, research organisations and SMEs attended the event in-person in the Albert Borschette Conference Centre in Brussels, and over 120 people followed the event online.

The event was timely in the context of the political priorities of the European Commission on artificial intelligence, including the launch of AI Factories and the development of the Apply AI strategy, to be published later this year, which will aim to boost new industrial uses of AI and to improve the delivery of a variety of public services, such as healthcare.

Find further information

• Watch the video with the event's highlights
• Watch the interviews with Thomas Skordas, Lorena Boix Alonso, Aiga Balode, Carlo Catalano and Luis-Marti Bonmati
• Watch the full video recording and presentations from the event