Dr Anando Sen

Anando's research interests are diverse and his primary projects have included a wide variety of applications in healthcare that are summarised below.

IDEAS National Evaluation Team - IDEAS-NET is the interdisciplinary evaluation of complex innovations in health and social care National Evaluation Team, based at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) Programme, to undertake evaluations in the organisation and delivery of complex innovations in health and care services. Adopting a bespoke co-design approach within each evaluation, we produce rigorous, timely and useful evidence to inform the transformation of services, innovations and outcomes, for all relevant stakeholders across health and social care.

conect4children - conect4children (c4c) was an Innovative Medicines Initiative funded project that addressed the barriers to conducting paediatric research by creating a pan-European clinical trial network. A strand of c4c focussed on the standardisation of data in paediatric clinical trials. Our tasks included (1) Implementation of the FAIR data principles; (2) Building a Cross Cutting Paediatric Data Dictionary to be used in proof of viability paediatric trials; (3) Developing a new global set of standards for paediatric data in collaboration with CDISC; (4) Exploring ways to use tools to standardise disease specfic data; and (5) Research the linkage between real world data and the data in clinical trials. These tasks would result in data that is more standardised, and interoperable. This potentially poolable data can then be used (and re-used) to allow for better planning of clinical trials and increased knowledge about paediatric medicines development. 

Radiology-pathology correlation for tumor delineations - Despite tremendous advancement of in vivo imaging modalities, there remains substantial uncertainty in tumor delineations in these images. Histopathology is the gold-standard for determining the extent of cancerous tumors. Correlating in vivo imaging with histopathology has the potential to provide a direct spatial comparison between the two. We use clinical and pre-clinical data to develop and validate correlative pathology methods.

Deformable image registration for liver cancer radiation therapy -Radiation therapy is often used to treat inoperable cholangiocarcinomas (bile-duct cancer). Due to the vast changes the liver can undergo during irradiation, deformable image registration an attractive option for comparing pre and post-treatment images, hence assessing the treatment. We develop and compare deformable registration techniques for this purpose.

Quantitative assessment of population representativeness in individual clinical trials - An apriori estimate for the population representativeness of a clinical trial can be a major aid in patient selection strategies. We develop a metric GIST 2.0, to compute the population representativeness based on eligibility criteria. The iterative use of this metric during the design of eligibility criteria can potentially optimize population representativeness within the constraints of patient safety.

Tumor localization tasks in prostate nuclear medicine images - Model Observers are mathematical models used for tumor localization tasks in medical imaging. Since medical images are analyzed by radiologists, it is crucial for model observers to be relevant for humans. We develop a visual-search observer and implement inefficiency models within it to account for human perceptions.

CT reconstructions with truncated projection data - CT scans have tremendous diagnostic value in the detection of tumors but are accompanied by risks of radiation-induced carcinomas. Restricting CT scans to a small region of interest can subtantially reduce the exposure to irradiation. We present a new algorithm to reconstruct anatomical images from such restricted scans that can maintain image quality comparable to full CT scans. The performance of the algorithm and its robustness to noise are validated on both synthetic and experimental data.

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• Development of the CDISC Pediatrics User Guide: a CDISC and conect4children collaboration, Owen, J., Sen, A., Aurich, B., Engel, C., Cavallaro, G., Degraeuwe, E., Kalra, D., Cornet, R., Walsh, M., Berkery, T., Palmeri, A., Mahler, F., Malik, S., Persijn, L., Amadi, C., Thuet, J., Woodworth, S., Nally, S., Leary, R., Marshall, R., Straub, V. 17 Jun 2024, In: Frontiers in Medicine
• Learning from conect4children: A Collaborative Approach towards Standardisation of Disease-Specific Paediatric Research Data, Sen, A., Hedley, V., Degraeuwe, E., Hirschfeld, S., Cornet, R., Walls, R., Owen, J., Robinson, P., Neilan, E., Liener, T., Nisato, G., Modi, N., Woodworth, S., Palmeri, A., Gaentzsch, R., Walsh, M., Berkery, T., Lee, J., Persijn, L., Baker, K., An Haack, K., Segovia Simon, S., Jacobsen, J., Reggiardo, G., Kirwin, M., Trueman, J., Pansieri, C., Bonifazi, D., Nally, S., Bonifazi, F., Leary, R., Straub, V. 8 Apr 2024, In: Data
• Standardizing Paediatric Clinical Data: The Development of the conect4children (c4c) Cross Cutting Paediatric Data Dictionary, Sen, A., Hedley, V., Owen, J., Cornet, R., Kalra, D., Engel, C., Palmeri, A., Lee, J., Roze, J., Standing, J., Warris, A., Pansieri, C., Leary, R., Turner, M., Straub, V. 13 Feb 2023, In: Journal of the Society for Clinical Data Management
• Paediatric-specific content in data standards for health, Turner, M., Kalra, D., Cornet, R., Palmeri, A., Sen, A., Owen, J., Pansieri, C., Lee, J., Hedley, V., Nally, S., Bonifazi, F., Leary, R., Straub, V. 19 Feb 2025, In: Archives of Disease in Childhood
• The Potential to Leverage Real-World Data for Pediatric Clinical Trials: A Proof-of-Concept Study, Declerck, J., Lee, J., Sen, A., Palmeri, A., Oostenbrink, R., Giannuzzi, V., Woodworth, S., Malik, S., Mahler, F., Aurich, B., Leary, R., Kalra, D., Straub, V. 30 May 2025, In: Journal of Medical Internet Research
• Standardizing paediatric clinical data: The development of the conect4children (c4c) cross cutting paediatric data dictionary, Sen, A., Hedley, V., Owen, J., Cornet, R., Kalra, D., Engel, C., Palmeri, A., Lee, J., Roze, J., Standing, J., Warris, A., Pansieri, C., Leary, R., Turner, M., Straub, V. 26 Apr 2023, CDISC 2023 Europe Interchange
• Understanding paediatric data standards challenges through academia-industry partnerships: A conect4children (c4c) qualitative study, Sen, A., Palmeri, A., Lee, J., Hedley, V., Thuet, J., Lignon, P., Cotonnec, V., Leary, R., Nally, S., Straub, V. 1 Mar 2023, In: International Journal of Health Planning and Management
• Performing clinical drug trials in children with a rare disease, Hedley, V., Leary, R., Sen, A., Irvin, A., Heslop, E., Straub, V. 26 Jul 2024, Essentials of Translational Pediatric Drug Development, London, United Kingdom, Elsevier
• GIST 2.0: A scalable multi-trait metric for quantifying population representativeness of individual clinical studies, Sen, A., Chakrabarti, S., Goldstein, A., Wang, S., Ryan, P., Weng, C. 2016, In: Journal of Biomedical Informatics
• The representativeness of eligible patients in type 2 diabetes trials: A case study using GIST 2.0, Sen, A., Goldstein, A., Chakrabarti, S., Shang, N., Kang, T., Yaman, A., Ryan, P., Weng, C. 2018, In: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
• Editorial work: JMIR Medical Informatics (Journal) 2025
• Organising a conference, workshop, ...: Engaging with the European Health Data Space (EHDS): The Paediatric Perspective 2024
• Editorial work: Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (Journal) 2024
• Publication Peer-review: Frontiers in Medicine (Journal) 2024
• Visiting an external academic institution: Ohio State University 2014
• Organising a conference, workshop, ...: Increasing the Harmonisation and Standardisation of Disease-Specefic Paediatric Trial Data 2022
• Oral presentation: Histological validation of anatomical imaging for breast modeling, 2021
• Publication Peer-review: Medical Physics (Journal) 2020
• Invited talk: Assessment of prostate cancer detection with a visual-search human model observer 2013
• Publication Peer-review: European Radiology (Journal) 2017

In addition to his primary projects, Anando has served as a data and statistical expert on several projects including patient registries, quality of life in neuromuscular disease, brain shift during neurosurgery, similarity-based patient recruitment for cinical trials, and internal dosimetry. He has also written statistical plans for two successful grant applications - 'Enhanced biomedical modelling of the breast for womens health' (funded by the National Institute of Health) and 'A pilot project to assess the acceptability, feasibility, and utility of force enhancement as a non-invasive measure of titin function in neuromuscular disease' (funded by the Academy of Medical Sciences).

• Mathematics PhD
• Mathematics MSc

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
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