NeuroGrid & PsyGrid(and maybe even NeuroPsyGrid)

Stephen Lawrie & Alan Williams

Edinburgh Manchester

A collaboration between clinical, imaging and e-scientists to create a Grid-based network of neuroimaging centres and a neuroimaging tool-kit, focused on three clinical exemplars: dementia, stroke and psychosis.

Sharing data, experience and expertise will facilitate the archiving, curation, retrieval and analysis of imaging data from multiple sites & enable large clinical studies.

        

 

The main issues in (UK) clinical brain imaging studies

• Potential:- demonstrate effects of risk factors, including genes; - early diagnosis; - treatment response / prognosis prediction;- treatment effect monitoring; - biomarker for novel drug development

• Concerns:- lack of standardisation across scanners and even in basic approach

to e.g. ‘connectivity’; - lack of normative data reference points for relevant age ranges; - safe data storage; - expense; - constantly developing technology

Neurogrid – psychosis exemplar1. Database and ontology, building on EHRS data set (0.5WTE)2. Scanner harmonisation issues, focussing on EHRS use of two machines

(1WTE)3. Combined analysis of psychosis data sets from Oxford & Edinburgh, focussing

on sex / assymmetry (1 WTE)

Registration and Partial Volume Metric for Multi-Center sMRI Scanner Harmonization Moorhead TWJ, Job DE, Gountouna V-E, Johnstone EC, Lawrie SM. HBM2005. NeuroImage 2005

Signal-to-Noise (SNR) and Contrast-to-Noise (CNR) metrics in longitudinal and multicenter MRI studies Gountouna VE, Moorhead TWJ, Job DE, Johnstone EC, Lawrie SM. HBM2005 NeuroImage 2005

Entropy as a measure of scanner and sequences change. Dominic E. Job, T. William J. Moorhead, Eve C. Johnstone, Stephen M. Lawrie. NeuroImage 2006 Volume 31, Supplement 1 Annual Meeting Human Brain Mapping, June 11-15 Florence Italy

Test-retest reliability of the Hayling sentence completion task: assessment for multicenter fMRI using voxel-wise Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICCs). Viktoria-Eleni Gountouna, Heather Whalley, T.William Moorhead, Dominic Job, David McGonigle, Eve Johnstone, Stephen Lawrie. HBM2006 NeuroImage 2006 Volume 31,

Edinburgh High Risk Study

• Baseline measures- genetic liability- dermatoglyphics- obstetric complications- minor physical anomalies /

neurological ‘soft signs’- CBCL- SIS- RISC

Also took blood for genes at the end of the study

• Repeated measures- substance use- life events- neuropsychology- structural MRI- functional MRI- PSE- PANSS

•A prospective study of ~200 subjects at high risk (HR) of Schizophrenia for genetic reasons i.e. initially healthy subjects aged 16-25 who had two or more close relatives with schizophrenia. Compared to first-episode cases and healthy controls on...

Edinburgh High Risk Study (EHRS)Main Results 1995-2004

Isolated and/or transient symptoms very common

Baseline risk of psychosis 20 / 162 (~12.5%)Risk in HR+ i.e. those with symptoms 18 / 80 (25%)

Most measures differed significantly between those at high risk and controls, typically with the sub-group pattern:

Con </> HR- </> HR+ <</>> HRill

Within high risk subjects, however, only AVLT, CBCL, RISC/SIS and some imaging indices predicted schizophrenia

(Johnstone et al 2005 Br J Psych)

EHRS Baseline predictors

0

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AHC - L AHC - R 3V Thal - L Thal - R

FES

HR

CON

fMRI – HSCT (parametric contrast): AHC/STG

a.) R ahc/stg; b.) R lingual gyrus; c.) L ahc/stg; d.) L cerebellum

* * *

* * *

a

b

d

*

c

*

42314132

4213

4312

Neuro-anatomy: AMYG-HIPP vol & Gyrification Index R PFC

Neuro-psychology: NART IQ, WAIS-R & VRs, RBMT story & especially AVLT 1-5 total score

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CONTROL HR- HR+ ILL

No.

item

s rec

alle

d

EHRS changes towards psychosis

GM densityReducesIn RightUncus,Fusiform &Cerebellum2.5 yrs on avge before Dx

Cannabis use and major life events are associated with psychotic symptoms and (weakly) with psychosis 2-4 yrs later. 0-2 yrs pre-diagnosis, anxiety/depression fall,typical psychotic symptoms supervene and GM density falls. But, no apparent changes in neuropsychological test scores over this time.

-2.5

-2

-1.5

-1

-0.5

0

0.5

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1.5

Onentry

2ndtime

onfalling

ill

depression

hallucinationsand control

delusions

mania

oddness

anxiety

Mean scores on the six PSE principal components on three occasions of 8 HR subjects who fell ill (relative to NP chronics)

        

 

A health informatics project which builds on the DoH funded UK MHRN. Psygrid aims to develop the MHRN into a functioning “e-community” and build a secure electronic database to hold anonymised clinical data about people presenting to NHS services with first episode psychosis.

Towards multi-centre clinical, genetic and brain imaging studies of people at high risk of psychosis:

MRC Collaboration grant application

NeuroPsyGrid: towards an ontologyand multi-centre brain imaging in early psychosis

 

     

  

Neuro/PsyGrid and BIRN

• Shared interests in scanner (clinical and genetic) harmonisation and shared database, metadata and ontology for psychosis

• During discussions about NPG we thought of looking at: - a collaborative ontology; - variations across sites in clinical and biological data acquisition; - using BIRN Bio-Mediator; - 4D spatio-temporal analyses of imaging (fMRI) and genetic data; - joint work on NeuroFMA; - a requirements analysis for NPG-BIRN harmonisation.

Concluding remarks

If brain imaging is to impact on clinical practice in psychiatry, as we know it could, we urgently require:

- Multi-centre clinical studies of people in early stages of major psychiatric disorders

- Standardisation of scanners and imaging acquisition and processing techniques across mental health research networks

- Studies of normal neuro-development across age ranges of relevance to (adult) psychiatric disorders

These would benefit, possibly even depend upon, on e-science approaches to collecting, storing and accessing data.