Frequently Asked Questions About the ACR National Clinical Imaging Research Registry™ (ANCIRR)

The American College of Radiology^® (ACR^®) Center for Research and Innovation (CRI) and ACR Informatics have launched a family of six research registries — with eight additional planned — to collect and curate images and clinical data from multiple practice settings. ANCIRR will produce large data sets that enable researchers to address complex scientific questions and produce results applicable across care settings, geographic locations and diverse populations. This new way of conducting research, enabled by advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), provides the ability to leverage electronic health records to fulfill the promise of digital data, aid health equity efforts and lead to both more broadly effective and more targeted patient care.

ACR research and informatics capabilities empower a new generation of research that can produce standards of care for the broader population and in specific groups. These capabilities have been honed through smaller projects — including the COVID-19 Imaging Research Registry™ (CIRR), a primary image provider and sole patient data supplier to the NIH-funded Medical Imaging Data Research Center (MIDRC). MIDRC is co-founded by the ACR, Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM). MIDRC is operated by the University of Chicago.

ANCIRR is spearheaded by the ACR CRI, led by ACR Chief Research Officer Etta Pisano, MD, ACR Research Commission Chair Pamela K. Woodard, MD, and ACR Executive Vice President Charlie Apgar; as well as ACR Informatics, overseen by ACR Informatics Commission Chair Christoph Wald, MD, and ACR Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President Mike Tilkin.

The National Radiology Data Registry (NRDR^®) is a radiology clinical quality improvement registry. NRDR receives anonymized data from sites collected during course of care and provides comparative feedback to support patient care quality and safety improvements. NRDR disseminates information on practice changes evidenced by NRDR data through health services research published in high-quality scientific venues.

ANCIRR empowers researchers to produce results that can establish new standards of clinical care. ANCIRR collects both images and clinical data from multiple practices, curates those data streams, and then creates large datasets that can be used to validate AI algorithms and fuel complex scientific research to produce results applicable across care settings, locations and populations.

ANCIRR is the program name for a portfolio of research registries. Four of the 14 ANCIRR registries focus on COVID-19 while the others address a variety of indications. Some ANCIRR registries will collect imaging and anonymized patient data. Some will solely collect imaging cases.

The ACR, RSNA and AAPM co-founded MIDRC, which is operated by the University of Chicago.

The ACR CRI is the imaging coordinator for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) multicenter COVID-19 Observational Study (CORAL) registry, which will link images with clinical data.

The ACR CRI is the imaging repository for the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) Discovery Viral Infection and Respiratory Illness Universal Study (VIRUS) COVID-19 Registry.

Participating sites can securely transmit medical images and anonymized patient health information to ANCIRR registries using ACR Informatics platforms, including TRIAD and ACR Connect. ANCIRR personnel can walk interested sites through the process to ensure that the onboarding process is as seamless as possible. Find out how at acr.org/researchregistry.

Please visit the ANCIRR webpage for more information about the program and our registries that are active. If you still have questions, you can email ancirr@acr.org and an ACR team member will support you.