Raquel Perez-Lopez is the team leader of the Radiomics Group at VHIO, and consultant Radiologist at Vall d’Hebron Hospital, within the Vall d’Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus. Her work aims to develop novel non-invasive imaging biomarkers in oncology to improve cancer patient care.
Scientific trajectory
Dr Raquel Perez-Lopez is an experienced academic radiologist trained at Bellvitge University Hospital in Barcelona (Spain) and the Royal Marsden Hospital and the Institute of Cancer Research in London (UK). Her PhD studies enabled her to identify the value of whole-body diffusion-weighted MRI as a prognostic and response biomarker of bone metastases in prostate cancer, that in turn led to the completion of the first prospective clinical trial in this context. Importantly, this work resulted in over fifteen manuscripts that she first or co-authored in prestigious titles including NEJM, Cell, Cancer Discovery, and Radiology.
Raquel joined VHIO in late 2017 as Principal Investigator of VHIO’s newly established Radiomics Group, focused on the application of advanced imaging processing tools and integration of imaging to other -omics. Her group seeks to improve cancer patient care by more effectively characterizing the antitumor effect of novel agents including immunotherapies and targeted therapies, identify those patients who are most likely to benefit from these, and further enforce VHIO’s translational research programs in genomics, predictive science, and biomarkers of response and resistance.
Contact and links
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Latest articles
K Bernatowicz, F Grussu, M Ligero, A Garcia, E Delgado, R Perez-Lopez. Robust imaging habitat computation using voxel-wise radiomics features. Scientific Reports 11, 20133 (2021); doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-99701-2.
M Ligero, A Garcia-Ruiz, C Viaplana, et al., R Perez-Lopez. A CT-based Radiomics Signature Is Associated with Response to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors in Advanced Solid Tumors. Radiology 299, 1 (2021); doi: 10.1148/radiol.2021200928
A Garcia-Ruiz, P Naval-Baudin, M Ligero, et al., R Perez-Lopez. Precise enhancement quantification in post-operative MRI as an indicator of residual tumor impact is associated with survival in patients with glioblastoma. Scientific Reports 11, 695 (2021); doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-79829-3
M Ligero, O Jordi-Ollero, K Bernatowicz, et al., R Perez-Lopez. Minimizing acquisition-related radiomics variability by image resampling and batch effect correction to allow for large-scale data analysis. European Radiology 31, 1460–1470 (2021); doi: 10.1007/s00330-020-07174-0
A Pons-Escoda, et al., R Perez-Lopez, C Majos. Presurgical Identification of Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma with Normalized Time-Intensity Curve: A Pilot Study of a New Method to Analyze DSC-PWI. American Journal of Neuroradiology 41, 10, 1816-1824 (2020); doi: 10.3174/ajnr.a6761.
S M Zunder, R Perez-Lopez, et al. W E Mesker. Correlation of the tumour-stroma ratio with diffusion weighted MRI in rectal cancer. European Journal of Radiology 133, 109345-109345 (2020); doi: 10.1016/j.ejrad.2020.109345
I Matos, et al., Perez-Lopez R, Garralda, E. Capturing Hyperprogressive disease with immune checkpoint inhibitors using RECIST 1.1 criteria. Clinical Cancer Research 26, 8, 1846-1855 (2020); ISSN 1078-0432; doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-19-2226
Recent grants and awards
Instituto de Salud Carlos III. “PRECISION: Deciphering colon cancer heterogeneitywith machine learning and precision imaging”. Role: principal investigator. Duration: 2022-2025.
Horizon 2020. “Building Data Rich Clinical Trials (DART).” Role: team member. Duration: 2021-2026.
Fundación Científica Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (AECC). “Tumoral senescence induced by anti-cancer therapies constitutes a novel prognostic biomarker and a therapeutic target”. Role: team member. Duration: 2021-2026.
CRIS Cancer Foundation. “Personalized response imaging biomarker for cancer immunotherapy”. Role: principal investigator. Duration: 2020-2025.
Innovative Medicine Initiative - Horizon2020. “Immune-Image: specific imaging of immune cell dynamics using novel tracer strategies”. Role: team member. Duration: 2019-2024.
Fundación La Marato de TV3. “PrecIMet: precision imaging for bone metastases”. Role: principal investigator. Duration: 2020-2023.
Fundación FERO. “Unraveling the tumor immunophenotype with deep-learning based radiogenomics”. Role: principal investigator. Duration: 2020-2022.
Instituto de Salud Carlos III. “Estudio de validación clínica de la resonancia de cuerpo completo con difusión en pacientes con cáncer de próstata resistente a la castración y metástasis ósea”. Role: principal investigator. Duration: 2019-2022.
Prostate Cancer Foundation. “A two-stage study to clinically qualify whole-body diffusion-weighted MRI in patients with metastatic castration resistant prostate carcinoma with bone metastases”. Role: principal investigator. Duration: 2018-2022.
