SOLICITATION NOTICE
R -- CMR Perfusion Series Image Registration and Analysis of Global and Local Myocardial Function
- Notice Date
- 9/22/2017
- Notice Type
- Presolicitation
- NAICS
- 541990
— All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Rockledge Dr. Bethesda, MD, Office of Acquisitions, 6701 Rockledge Dr RKL2/6100 MSC 7902, Bethesda, Maryland, 20892-7902
- ZIP Code
- 20892-7902
- Solicitation Number
- HHSN26817HL00061S
- Archive Date
- 10/11/2017
- Point of Contact
- Jonathan M. Lear,
- E-Mail Address
-
john.lear@nih.gov
(john.lear@nih.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Introduction This is a pre-solicitation non-competitive (notice of intent) synopsis to award a purchase order without providing for full and open competition. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), Office of Acquisitions (OA), intends to negotiate and award a purchase order on a noncompetitive sole source basis to Corstem, Inc. to provide Computer Software Programming Support and Development for NHLBI Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Image Processing and Quantification in accordance with the following information. Background Information Heart attacks are caused by the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, depriving cells of oxygen. The Advanced Cardiovascular Imaging Group focuses their research on understanding and intervening in this process of myocardial infarction and ischemia. They are actively involved in developing new imaging methods, in particular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies that can be used in the clinic. The new technologies are validated in pre-clinical and clinical studies, which generate another cycle of new imaging methods-a process that leads to improved understanding of myocardial ischemia and infarction and practical new imaging methods suitable for diagnostic imaging. The laboratory has also successfully moved new technologies into the clinical setting. For example, the lab developed new MRI methodologies that are more reliable than product-level pulse sequences, validated these methodologies in animal models, and translated them into patients. They have also worked on quantifying the extracellular volume fraction of myocardium, a measurement with potential to detect diffuse myocardial fibrosis; cardiac fibrosis is an early sign in many cardiomyopathies, and a method of detection could have great prognostic value. The laboratory has also been a leader in using cardiac MRI to understand the role of edema within the area at risk (AAR) of an acute myocardial infarction; comparing the AAR to actual infarct size offers an additional level of clinical information, as it shows the effectiveness of intervention strategies. Quantitative analysis of myocardial perfusion has recently documented that first-pass stress perfusion cardiac MRI scans can be quantified at a pixel level, which is equivalent to approximately 32 microliter volumes of myocardium. This resolution is more than an order of magnitude higher than currently possible by the physiological reference standard, microsphere methodology, and higher resolution than clinically available methods, which someday may enable much more nuanced patient diagnosis of coronary artery disease. These studies have benefited from new image acquisition methods and analysis techniques developed within the laboratory. Purpose and Objectives The purpose of this acquisition is to procure contractor support for the development of Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR) image processing, visualization, and quantification tools. The lab's current pixel-wise myocardial blood flow (MBF) quantification uses a dedicated arterial input function (AIF) image series to calibrate MBF estimates. This requires research MR imaging sequences and/or optimized acquisition protocols to control the linearity of MR signal intensity during the first-pass contrast passage. The lab aims to develop a potentially interesting remedy to this issue by computing myocardial perfusion reserve (MPR) maps automatically. The goal is to alleviate the demand for manual segmentation and registration of stress and rest MBF maps to compute the MPR measurement. Furthermore, such MPR map can also overcome the limitation in overestimated stress and rest MBF maps since such overestimation can be effectively cancelled and normalized with the ratio calculation. The main engineering challenge is thus to register the anatomical structures present in the dynamic rest and rest series together at a pixel or sub-pixel accuracy. Contractor Requirements The contractor shall provide the following: -Augment the current implementation of MOCO based on large displacement optical flow with an edge-preserving interpolation of correspondences scheme. This should theoretically improve motion estimation at difficult boundary locations such as the myocardium walls while preserving perfusion signal intensity dynamics. -Improve computational speed by implementing a parallel sub patch approach that divides the CMR images into non-overlapping regions each sent to a different processing core. The sub patch approach may also permit a more precise estimation of motion of fine structures during the variational energy minimization step of the MOCO engine. -Test the new MOCO approach on a curated cohort of difficult cases, where residual myocardial deformations were observed. -Devise a suitable preprocessing scheme to extract and enhance salient anatomical information in both the rest and stress myocardial perfusion series. This may resemble a reduction-to-unimodality paradigm where bridge series are used as surrogates where the frame-to-frame deformations are computed in step 3. -Compensate the inter-series motion between rest and stress images to mitigate large deformations and align the anatomical structures to a consistent geometrical configuration. -Devise a suitable registration engine capable of handling the highly dynamic nature of the series. This stage requires robustness to time-varying pixel intensity fluctuations caused by bolus transit and subsequent myocardial enhancement. In addition, although the rest and stress series may be compensated for the motion within, there may be both large and subtle nonrigid deformations between them. The registration engine must be able to handle these scenarios. -Compute the quantitative myocardial pixel map of both the motion compensated and registered rest and stress series. -Compute the MPR by taking the pixel-wise ratio of the pixel maps. -Evaluate the quality of the MPR maps with automated analysis on a large cohort of coronary artery disease patients with known myocardial perfusion defects. The comparison of the MPR maps with the classical quantitative perfusion pixel maps will be performed by computing the sectoral correlation between the two and by visual inspection of CMR experts. -Devise an automatic myocardium delimitation routine based on a segmentation-from-motion paradigm. By clustering the motion components following large displacement optical flow, the general myocardial region may be automatically localized. -Fit a surface mesh on the segmented myocardial region. -Within the segmented myocardial region, large displacement optical flow may be used to estimate and track the apparent frame-to-frame deformations. Following each deformation, the positions of the mesh's vertices will be updated. -Compare the deformation profiles of the surface mesh of known cardiac patients with healthy deformations. -Implement an operator assisted drawing tool to delimit the regions of interest in the myocardium that need to be tracked. -Implement an automatic frame-to-frame tracking routine capable of handling both large and subtle nonrigid displacements. This includes augment the tracking using a probabilistic prediction/correction scheme to deal with transient structure disappearances to morphological changes. -Extract the principal motion component profiles from tracked the moving cardiac structures. -Calculate rate of displacement toward and away from the LV apex and other commonly used measurements of diastolic function. Sole Source Justification The sole source determination is because this is a follow-on to an existing contract and Corstem, Inc. is currently providing these services. Due to their specific experience and expertise with the projects outlined above, only Corstem would be able to complete any significant fraction of the work within the project interval. If another contractor were to take over, there would not only be a lapse in services in order to train the new contractor on the processes and procedures of the lab, but there would be an expensive and duplicative investment in analysis, training, and implementation. This loss of productivity and substantial duplication of costs is unacceptable to the Government. Regulatory Authority This acquisition is conducted under the authority of the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) Subpart 13.106-1(b) Soliciting from a single source. (1) For purchases not exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold, contracting officers may solicit from one source if the contracting officer determines that the circumstances of the contract action deem only one source reasonably available (e.g., urgency, exclusive licensing agreements, or industrial mobilization). FAR Clauses The provision at FAR clause 52.212-1, Instructions to Offerors - Commercial Items, applies to this acquisition. The provision at FAR clause 52.212-2, Evaluation - Commercial Items, is applicable. The Government will award a contract resulting from this notice to the offeror listed above. The following factors shall be used to evaluate the offer: The contractor shall demonstrate its ability to provide the above listed services. FAR clause 52.212-3, Offeror Representations and Certifications - Commercial Items, is applicable. An offeror shall complete only paragraphs (b) of this provision if the offeror has completed the annual representations and certificates electronically via http://www.acquisition.gov. If an offeror has not completed the annual representations and certifications electronically at the System for Award Management (SAM) website, the offeror shall complete only paragraphs (c) through (p) of this provision. FAR clause at 52.212-4, Contract Terms and Conditions - Commercial Items, applies to this acquisition. FAR clause at 52.212-5, Contract Terms and Conditions Required to Implement Statutes or Executive Orders - Commercial Items, applies to this acquisition. Additional Information The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code is 541990 and the Small Business Size Standard is $15.0M. This acquisition is being conducted under FAR Part 13, Simplified Acquisition Procedures, therefore the requirements of FAR Part 6, Competitive Requirements, are not applicable and the resultant award will include all applicable provisions and clauses in effect through the Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 05-95 (January 19, 2017). This synopsis is not a request for competitive proposals. However, interested parties may identify their interest and capability to respond to this notice. Responses to this notice shall contain sufficient information to establish the interested parties' bona-fide capabilities for fulfilling the requirement and include: unit price, list price, shipping and handling costs, the delivery period after contract award, the prompt payment discount terms, the F.O.B. Point (Destination or Origin), the Dun & Bradstreet Number (DUNS), the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), and the certification of business size. All offerors must have an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) www.sam.gov. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. The information received will normally be considered solely for the purposes of determining whether to proceed on a non-competitive basis or to conduct a competitive procurement. All responses must be received by September 26, 2017 at 12:00PM EST and must reference synopsis number HHSN26817HL00061S. Responses shall be submitted electronically to john.lear@nih.gov. Responses will only be accepted if dated and signed by an authorized company representative. All responsible sources may submit a bid, proposal, or quotation which shall be considered by the agency.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/HHS/NIH/NHLBI/HHSN26817HL00061S/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: National Institutes of Health / NHLBI, Bethesda, Maryland, 20892, United States
- Zip Code: 20892
- Zip Code: 20892
- Record
- SN04690552-W 20170924/170922231340-cede241b2d55e1a73c1d70d8967e7d40 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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