Biggest human imaging study scans 100,000th UK volunteer

Scientists say that thanks to more than a billion scanning of the UK volunteers, they can examine our bodies in more detail than ever before.

The world’s largest human imaging project, now says that 100,000 people have achieved the goal of scanning their brain, hearts and other organs – the culmination of an ambitious 11 -year work.

“Researchers are starting to use imaging data with other data we have to describe the disease at an earlier stage,” British Biobank Chief Scientist Prof. Naomi Allen says.

Data are offered to teams around the world at low cost to find new ways to prevent common health conditions from heart disease to cancer.

The 100,000th volunteer to be scanned was Steve, who recently retired from a job in sales and helped a charity institution that was now ruled by his daughter.

BBC watched as a full body MRI browser in an industrial park outside the reading, and detailed images of brain cells, blood vessels, bones and joints appeared on the screens.

“My mother was diagnosed with early stage dementia a few years ago, and it wasn’t good,” he says.

“I want to go back to research more so that you can learn from people like me by keeping this in mind.”

The giant medical imaging project takes 13 hours a day for seven days a week in four areas in the UK.

The participants are given a five-hour appointment to scan five different MRIs, X-ray and ultrasound machines.

The collected data are anonymized and radiographs do not receive individual feedback unless the potentially detects a serious health problem.

The project does not allow the publication of personal data such as the volunteer’s surname or the exact area they experience.

Biobank, released in 2003, is one of the world’s largest biological examples and health data collections.

In total, half a million people-all-middle-aged volunteers were asked to complete the tests, to answer regular health and lifestyle questions, and to provide DNA and other biological examples.

Their blood, urine and saliva are frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80C (-112f) temperatures in large refrigerators in Greater Manchester.

The imaging part of the project started in 2014 and includes detailed scans of 100,000 of the same participants.

All this group will be invited to repeat the process every few years to see how their bodies and organs change as they age.

By combining these scans with other data collected by the UK Biobank, scientists can test that early changes in the brain or body make -up then cause diseases or other health problems in later life.

All UK Biobank project, which is a non -profit organization, was founded by the Ministry of Health and the Scottish government by the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust Charity.

Twenty years later, it is now reaching maturity.

For researchers working for universities, charities, governments and private sectors, more than 30 petabytes or 30,000 terabytes are already available.

Scientists in the UK and the rest of the world can apply for access and most are charged between £ 3,000 to £ 9,000 to help meet business costs.

Louise Thomas, a metabolic imaging professor at the University of Westminster, says how he “completely transforms” how he and other researchers do their jobs.

“We thought it was a crazy idea, and there was no way for anyone to scan this issue, or he says.

“It would take us thousands of years to analyze these images manually, but now … We can automatically remove all the information, so that we can measure everything in the body in a few minutes.”

Researchers use artificial intelligence (AI) to process a large amount of data produced by the project.

Since it started in 2003, approximately 1,700 refereed articles have been written using all kinds of Biobank data and dozens of more published every week.

The scans and images taken so far have already been used to show the following:

In addition to similar initiatives in Biobank, Germany, China and the United States, the UK is one of the world’s top 10 personal health data stores, but these projects do not make their data available globally in the same way for scientists.

The imaging element of the project is financed by a number of other organizations, including the British Heart Foundation, Calico and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilance Chan, a subsidiary of the Alphabet, which is also the owner of Google.