The 4th Consortium Meeting of the LUCA project took place from November 30th to December 1st in Birmingham, UK. T. Durduran gave the introduction talk and explained the overall progress of the project. He emphasised that the first version of the device would be ready by the summer of 2018. Subsequently, the partners gave an overview of the current development within each work package.
For the development of components and sub-systems package, L. Cortese presented the next deliverables due in the following months and for the end of the year, in particular those involving the upgrade of the software, hardware components and the DCS components and subsystems. Subsequently, M. Renna, together with D. Contini and A. Tosi gave a presentation on the TRS components and subsystems, while S. de Fraguier provided an update of the communication protocol and summarised the next steps for completing the communication protocol, with a fully functional software processing real data ready by June 2018.
On the other hand, B. Rosinski provided an overview of the Optical-Ultrasound multi-modal probe. Regarding the LUCA software server, S. Wojtkiewicz reported that all objectives have been accomplished 4th LUCA Consortium Meeting Birmingham, UK - November 30-December 1, 2017 in due time. As for the development of the demonstrator, U. Weigel reported on the advancement of the DCS and TRS modules and A. Dalla Mora provided an update on ex vivo phantom validation and standardisation. With respect to the validation in real-settings and the writing of a clinical protocol, M. Mora explained that the protocol was based on versions already submitted to the ethical committee and presented the protocols for a control group (10 patients) and a case group (35 patients, 15 benign, 10 malignant, 10 multinodular goiter).
As for the project management, K. Krischak summarized all internal deadlines for the upcoming deliverables and P. Zolda presented all dissemination activities from the last meeting, highlighting that LUCA was chosen to participate in the “Common Dissemination Booster” programme of the European Commission to boost dissemination capabilities and outreach. Finally, regarding the exploitation phase of the project, E. Garcia gave an overview of the preliminary product/ service profile and reviewed the potential markets and exploitation avenues for the LUCA device.
