Project: Harmonising Brain Imaging Methods for Vascular Contributions to Neurodegeneration
| Acronym | HARNESS (Reference Number: JPCOFUND_FP-940-013) |
| Duration | 01/10/2016 - 31/03/2017 |
| Project Topic | Vascular disease is the second most common cause of dementia. Neuroimaging research has identified many manifestations of cerebrovascular disease, with complex effects on brain structure and function. A previous JPND-funded initiative provided highly cited Standards for Reporting Vascular Changes on Neuroimaging (STRIVE), unifying the field around common lesion definitions and terminology. The time is now ripe to build on this consensus by disseminating harmonised acquisition protocols, providing access to exemplar MR datasets for reader reliability training and quantitative computerized algorithm development, and recommending methods in emerging areas of research. Following a series of teleconferences and an in-person workshop, our group will: 1) collect MR protocols and make them publicly available via a website; 2) collect exemplar MR data demonstrating a range of cerebrovascular lesion types, and develop a framework for a password-protected web-based image repository to make these data made freely available to the research community; 3) provide recommendations for reliability and reproducibility testing for multi-centre studies; and 4) provide recommendations for acquisition protocols in emerging research areas in cerebral small vessel disease (including 7T imaging, diffusion tensor imaging, perfusion and vascular reactivity, perivascular spaces and PET molecular imaging). |
| Network | JPco-fuND |
| Call | Working Groups for Harmonisation and Alignment in Brain Imaging Methods for Neurodegeneration |