1. © 2006 STEP Consortium Towards the EuroPhysiome roadmap STEP CONFERENCE#1 Hard Tissue Strand discussion Monday, May 15 th Fulvia Taddei

2. © 2006 STEP Consortium HT Strand Whole body: –Skeleton kinematics –Musculoskeletal modelling Organ level: –Bone biomechanics –Dental biomechanics Tissue/cell level: –Bone modelling and remodelling –Fracture healing –Bone/implant integration

3. © 2006 STEP Consortium HT Modelling The mathematical modelling of the skeleton behaviour to predict its function and its adaptive response to altered conditions –PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PATHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS –MULTISCALE APPROACH –COUPLED WITH SOFT-TISSUE MODELLING

4. © 2006 STEP Consortium Spatial/time scales Spatial scale from 10^-3mm to 10^3mm Time scale from 10^-3s to 10^6s

5. © 2006 STEP Consortium Computational effort From standard PC to HPC facilities From few mins to 5000 hours of CPU time From few Mb to several Gb

6. © 2006 STEP Consortium Activities that need innovation Automatic mesh generation Validation Reliable anthropometrical data from wide populations Image processing and data fusion Quantitative experimental data for parameters setting Protocols standardisation

7. © 2006 STEP Consortium Major research challenges Subject-specific FEM generation Verification/validation Accurate in-vivo skeletal motion

8. © 2006 STEP Consortium Methods to be improved Multiscale data fusion Protocols for movement analysis

9. © 2006 STEP Consortium Lacking resources Infrastructures to store and exchange data Shared exp/clinical/imaging/modelling data libraries People recruiting Fundings

10. © 2006 STEP Consortium Ethical issues Difficulties in accessing body donation programs In-vivo clinical data acquisition

11. © 2006 STEP Consortium Other barriers? Communication between research groups Communication between different backgrounds (e.g. clinicians/engineers)

12. © 2006 STEP Consortium Can collaboration help? YES Data/models/algorithms/competence sharing

13. © 2006 STEP Consortium How to improve collaboration Identify a clear and shared goal Develop standards Create mechanism to improve contacts and collaboration like international networks Exchange of personnel

14. © 2006 STEP Consortium Foreseen VHP impact Orthopaedic and pharmaceutical manufacturers Personalised treatment for rare pathologies Improve diagnosis and rehabilitative plans

15. © 2006 STEP Consortium The Roadmap Common Objectives Research Challenges Resources Required Ethical, Legal and Gender Issues Organisation Model Community Building Initiatives

16. © 2006 STEP Consortium Common Objectives Create a self-governing community to: –Set the rules for the collaborations –Set the technological standards –Maintain a semantic representation of the VPH –Coordinate dissemination efforts –Protect the logos, the names, etc. –Steer VPH development by providing grants, prices, etc.

17. © 2006 STEP Consortium Common Objectives (cont’d) Establish some pilot repositories –LHDL –AneurIST –??? Develop common tools: –Middleware for the creation of federated VPH repositories –Extensible software framework for the creation of VPH resources –Application software for the provision of solutions to final users

18. © 2006 STEP Consortium Common Objectives (cont’d) Management –Develop and operate the VPH portal –Establish pilot exploitation initiatives –Develop business models for long-term sustainability

19. © 2006 STEP Consortium Research challenges - HT CONSENSUS NOT REACHED ON SINGLE CHALLENGES BUT ON STRUCTURE Whole body level Organ level Tissue level Cell level Sub-cell level …WORK IN PROGRESS..

20. © 2006 STEP Consortium Whole body level Accuracy of motion data Anthropometrical reliable data Validation Movement control

21. © 2006 STEP Consortium Research challenges translational Anatomy & Physiology –General scaling rules for anatomy –How to merge subject-specific and population based anatomical models –Experimental data to validate models to predict pathological and physiological changes –Quantitative/absolute information of cellular and molecular biology –Quantitative/absolute information of tissues histomorphology –Quantitative/absolute information on Cellular/extracellular components

22. © 2006 STEP Consortium Research challenges translational Multiscale modelling –How to include mesoscale morphology in the continuum formulation on each level? –How to characterise and model effectively and accurately non-homogeneity and anisotropy of tissues? –How to discretise a spatial domain defined by sampling and not by boundary? –How to concatenate or couple different simulations in a generic way?

23. © 2006 STEP Consortium Research challenges translational ICT Infrastructure –How to provide transparent access to the (federate) GRID resources (data repository and computational facilities)? –Support for optimisation and parallelisation –How to deal with the proliferation of formats in digital biomedical data? –How to create repositories of simulations? –How to include models targeting commercial solvers?

24. © 2006 STEP Consortium Resources Required Direct EC funding for continuous operation of the common infrastructure Funding for developing European networks –between Domain Experts and Users –between Technologists and Domains experts Funding for large VPH sub-systems: –… –Musculoskeletal –… Several smaller grants for specific topics (e.g. biology, bioengineering, ICT, early clinical demonstrators)

25. © 2006 STEP Consortium Resources Required (cont’d) Programs to coordinate VPH national efforts Programs to encourage cross- disciplinary training and educational programs and researchers mobility

26. © 2006 STEP Consortium Ethical, Legal and Gender Issues Clinical data ownership Limits of clinical data sharing EC data sharing policy (NIH model?) IPR models Affirmative policies for gender equality in all VPH initiatives

27. © 2006 STEP Consortium The Organisational Model A no-profit organisation that owns the assets and moderate the community An independent organisation (public or private) directly supported by the EC that operates the common infrastructure (portal, software suite distribution, etc.)

28. © 2006 STEP Consortium The Organisational Model An array of VPH hosting nodes located at public supercomputing centres sustained at the national level as services to the research community, but open for hosting of data from any member state (final users access might be limited to nationals) A federation of Europhysiome projects that access the common infrastructure in exchange of adhesion to the rules of the VPH

29. © 2006 STEP Consortium Community Building Initiatives Create a data sharing policy based on barter or on the collection of access fees that the resource owner can modulate on the type of user (profit, no-profit, clinical, etc.) Promote all-inclusiveness in the management of the initiative Promote a distribution of resources based on goal orientation