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Project Topic
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Background: Early and accurate diagnosis, prognosis, and tracking are still a challenge for the most prevalent neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Frontotemporal Dementia, and Huntington’s (AD, PD, FTD, HD). Much can be learned from multicentre longitudinal studies on molecular, functional, and structural neuroimaging biomarkers from PET, EEG, and MRI, but harmonization of image acquisition and processing remains challenging. Inadequate harmonisation prevents comparing data from different studies, delays the use of biomarkers in clinical research and drug discovery, leading to uneven and suboptimal quality of care and slowing of drug discovery. Aims: i) Identify critical factors challenging the large scale harmonization of multicentre clinical research neuroimaging studies (MRI, PET, EEG). This goal will be addressed by conducting a survey in expert centres. ii) Develop a strategic research agenda (SRA) providing a framework for addressing the most critical barriers for neuroimaging harmonization in large scale longitudinal multicentric studies. The SRA will help funding agencies to identify topics and actions deserving funding with the ultimate aim of developing best practice guidelines for biomarkers in neurodegenerative diseases. Workplan: Three subgroups of international experts will work on MRI, PET, and EEG neuroimaging markers, respectively. Based on the experience of international projects, an online questionnaire will be generated to evaluate the barriers to multicentre harmonization procedures in months 1-‐2 (M1-‐2). The survey will be addressed to imaging sites that are part of leading European AD, PD, FTD, and HD consortia (M3-‐4). The survey will address hardware and software features, data quality control, data format, sharing and analyses pipelines. The Background: Early and accurate diagnosis, prognosis, and tracking are still a challenge for the most prevalent neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Frontotemporal Dementia, and Huntington’s (AD, PD, FTD, HD). Much can be learned from multicentre longitudinal studies on molecular, functional, and structural neuroimaging biomarkers from PET, EEG, and MRI, but harmonization of image acquisition and processing remains challenging. Inadequate harmonisation prevents comparing data from different studies, delays the use of biomarkers in clinical research and drug discovery, leading to uneven and suboptimal quality of care and slowing of drug discovery. Aims: i) Identify critical factors challenging the large scale harmonization of multicentre clinical research neuroimaging studies (MRI, PET, EEG). This goal will be addressed by conducting a survey in expert centres. ii) Develop a strategic research agenda (SRA) providing a framework for addressing the most critical barriers for neuroimaging harmonization in large scale longitudinal multicentric studies. The SRA will help funding agencies to identify topics and actions deserving funding with the ultimate aim of developing best practice guidelines for biomarkers in neurodegenerative diseases. Workplan: Three subgroups of international experts will work on MRI, PET, and EEG neuroimaging markers, respectively. Based on the experience of international projects, an online questionnaire will be generated to evaluate the barriers to multicentre harmonization procedures in months 1-‐2 (M1-‐2). The survey will be addressed to imaging sites that are part of leading European AD, PD, FTD, and HD consortia (M3-‐4). The survey will address hardware and software features, data quality control, data format, sharing and analyses pipelines. The subgroups will develop early SRA drafts (M4-‐5) that will be revised during a two-‐day workshop (M6). The revised SRA drafts (M7) will be shared with international clinical and neuroimaging experts from academia, pharma, patients’ advocates, industry, regulatory agencies and scientific societies through an open web-‐based social forum (M8). Contributions will be included in the final SRA across marker modalities (M9), which will be disseminated through websites of relevant EU scientific societies, international conferences and scientific papers.A drafts (M4-‐5) that will be revised during a two-‐day workshop (M6). The revised SRA drafts (M7) will be shared with international clinical and neuroimaging experts from academia, pharma, patients’ advocates, industry, regulatory agencies and scientific societies through an open web-‐based social forum (M8). Contributions will be included in the final SRA across marker modalities (M9), which will be disseminated through websites of relevant EU scientific societies, international conferences and scientific papers.
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