MRI scanners have the potential to help doctors decide whether we are at risk of certain diseases. To reach this potential, we first need to study a very large number of people to understand which MRI-based measures are most informative. We also need to make sure that we study people from different countries and across different ages to make sure that the MRI-based predictions can be used for everyone. This project brings together several big research studies so that we can look at the same MRI-based measures across continents, ages, and groups to find the best MRI-based predictors of disease.
Our aim is to compare MRI-based markers of disease between the UK Biobank and other big data initiatives such as the Human Connectome Project, Connectomes Related to Human Disease projects, and the “All of us” study. We will analyse the MRI data to extract potential markers (for example based on connectivity patterns in the brain), and to develop new markers. We want to understand what these MRI markers can potentially tell us about health outcomes, and how they are related to other aspects of our lifestyle and our body’s physiology. We will use advanced analysis methods and develop new approaches to study the complex relationships between MRI-based measures and other factors such as genetics, lifestyle, and physiology, in a range of psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases.