Weill Cornell Medical College to receive $3.6 million for CT screening research

The American Legacy Foundation and the United Kingdom's Medicsight Foundation have donated $1.8 million each to fund a study that will use CT screening to detect lung cancer.

Weill Medical College of Cornell University will conduct the research for the 4,000-patient study designed to determine if CT screening for lung cancer can be effectively linked to smoking-cessation programs. The study is set to begin in June.

"This newly funded study represents a unique opportunity to understand how to best increase smoking cessation in the context of CT screening," said Claudia Henschke, MD, the study's principal investigator. "At the same time, we will be incorporating and developing advanced image processing software to make screening as effective as possible."

Henschke is director of the Lung Cancer Screening Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and professor of radiology and division chief of chest imaging.

The American Legacy Foundation is dedicated to tobacco prevention and cessation, while the Medicsight Foundation provides research funds for medical imaging.

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