The IIT Kharagpur and the Tata Medical Center has collaborated for setting up a Comprehensive Digital Archive of Cancer Imaging (CHAVI) to aid cancer research in India.

Through the National Digital Library Initiative (NDLI) of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the institute has joined hands with the cancer care centre for the pilot project for developing an image data bank for cancer patients.

An IIG-KGP statement said the project will be India's first step towards harnessing artificial intelligence and deep learning methods to answer medical questions of importance in the field of image banking."The CHAVI poject is the first of its kind. The objective of the National Digital Library of India is to make accessible material for research. With the project, we have chosen cancer imaging database along with Tata Medical Centre because of their tremendous expertise," it quoted Principal Investigator of NDLI Partha Pratim Chakraborty as saying at a workshop held here on Friday.

At the workshop, Dr Sanjoy Chatterjee of the Tata Medical Center said there is a need for more affordable solutions in India for cancer treatment.