Pain Assessment in Cancer Patients by Machine LEarning (PASCALE)
-
- STATUS
- Recruiting
-
- End date
- Oct 20, 2027
-
- participants needed
- 40
-
- sponsor
- National Cancer Institute, Naples
Summary
In cancer patients, the integration between anticancer therapies and palliative care is of fundamental importance. In this context, telemedicine can improve the quality of life (QoL) of chronic patients through self-management and remote monitoring solutions. This approach can favor the effectiveness of the treatment and therapeutic adherence. Of note, telemedicine can also be applied to the management of cancer pain. In the advanced stages of cancer disease, pain is one of the most obvious and most disabling symptoms. Consequently, proper pain management has a significant impact on the QoL, the ability to withstand treatment, and the recovery of patients. On the other hand, given the complexity of cancer pain, the main obstacle to its proper management is the lack of adequate measurement methods. Although in recent years a great deal of effort has been made in the direction of automatic pain assessment, both concerning the creation of datasets and the development of classification algorithms, the literature is lacking regarding the automatic measurement of pain in the setting of cancer patients. Observation by experienced clinical staff and self-assessment by patients could be useful for obtaining the ground truth and, in turn, for training automatic pain recognition systems.
Description
For the entire duration of the study, patients will remain under the care of the Early Palliative Care and Simultaneous Care Outpatient team of the Istituto Nazionale Tumori, Fondazione Pascale, at home. Pain and other symptoms will be managed according to the good clinical practice and patients will receive assistance in agreement to the routine medical care.
The following devices will be used:
- Software
- Instrumentation
- Clinical Assessment Tools: European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality-of-life Questionnaire Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30), Daily Pain Diary, 0-10 numeric rating scale (NRS).
The project will be divided into three main Work Packages (WPs), dedicated respectively to the creation of the IT infrastructure to support acquisitions (WP1), the patient data collection campaign (WP2), and the development of machine learning algorithms for automatic pain recognition (WP3). The application of the devices and verification of correct functioning will be carried out at the patient's home by the IT staff involved in the study.
WP1 - The system consists of three main components: the server, with the attached database, the application for mobile devices, also responsible for managing data acquisition from physiological signal acquisition devices, and the desktop application, used by the clinical staff to monitor the progress of data collection.
The mobile application will have the role of interfacing directly with the patient and acquiring biometric data from wearable devices. Specifically, the following signals will be acquired: heart rate, body temperature, non-invasive blood pressure, and galvanic skin response (GSR). The heart rate will be obtained through a wearable device (Garmin Vivosmart 4) while the body temperature, the non-invasive blood pressure, and the GSR will be acquired by an external device (a BITalino platform).To further validate the accuracy of the algorithm that will deal with pain detection, patients will also be given a QoL questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30).
In order to acquire the ground truth of the data, the patient will be asked to provide feedback on the level of pain, both at certain intervals of time during the day, and in case of acute pain episodes. This feedback can be based on NRS and multimedia strategies (e.g., videos). Patients will fill out a daily pain diary.
WP2 - The campaign will include a preliminary acquisition phase aimed at testing the IT infrastructure. For obtaining an adequate inter-subject and intra-subject variability, it will be necessary to enroll at least 40 patients, acquiring data for 10-14 days. Thus, the data collection campaign will be conducted for about 6 months. Each subject will use the mobile application and sensors for 2 weeks. Data will be acquired using simultaneously data collection bundles (application, sensors, and any mobile device). Upon enrolment and at the end, EORTC QLQ-C30 will be administered.
WP3 - The objective is the development of algorithms able to predict the level of pain perceived by the patient. Having a considerable amount of labelled data available, the system will learn from the examples.
Details
| Condition | Oncology, Cancer Pain, Quality of Life |
|---|---|
| Age | 18years or above |
| Clinical Study Identifier | NCT04726228 |
| Sponsor | National Cancer Institute, Naples |
| Last Modified on | 20 March 2026 |
How to participate?
,
Send a message
Enter your contact details to connect with study team
Primary Contact
Additional screening procedures may be conducted by the study team before you can be confirmed eligible to participate.
Learn moreIf you are confirmed eligible after full screening, you will be required to understand and sign the informed consent if you decide to enroll in the study. Once enrolled you may be asked to make scheduled visits over a period of time.
Learn moreComplete your scheduled study participation activities and then you are done. You may receive summary of study results if provided by the sponsor.
Learn moreSimilar trials to consider
Not finding what you're looking for?
Sign up as a volunteer to stay informed
Every year hundreds of thousands of volunteers step forward to participate in research. Sign up as a volunteer and receive email notifications when clinical trials are posted in the medical category of interest to you.
Sign up as volunteerStudy Definition
WikipediaAdd a private note
- Select a piece of text.
- Add notes visible only to you.
- Send it to people through a passcode protected link.