On November 29, 2007 at the RSNA Annual Meeting, the second Quantitative Imaging Stakeholders' Meeting was held. This meeting was convened with representation from pharmaceutical companies, imaging equipment manufacturers, imaging informatics companies, government agencies, imaging societies, RSNA leadership, and clinical trialists.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss whether these entities could work together to advance quantitative imaging by focusing on standardizing the use of imaging biomarkers in clinical trials. The goal would be to enable pharmaceutical companies to run multi-center trials across imaging vendors, by reducing variance inherent among differing hardware and software platforms. RSNA views this as a means to an ultimate goal of enhancing the use of quantitative imaging methods in clinical practice. RSNA proposed that the model established by the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) collaboration be employed for this new process. The group, now known as QIBA - Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers Alliance, agreed to pursue the IHE approach to collaboration. A 1-1/2 day working meeting with breakouts on Volumetric CT, DCE-MRI, and FDG-PET was held May 20-21, 2008 in Oak Brook, Illinois. A roadmap or pathway outlining the steps necessary to obtain consistent and accurate quantitative outputs from different scanners will be developed, and each breakout group will define specific tasks and deliverables that need to be accomplished for their respective modality. We anticipate that this process, like the IHE collaboration, will extend over several years. RSNA is committed to helping transform radiology from a qualitative to a more quantitative science, to help patients benefit from accelerated development and dissemination of new pharmacologic, biologic and interventional diagnosis and treatment approaches.