BBSRC ICURe: Quantified Imaging

量化成像将使医院能够利用两种新型MRI扫描，称为动脉自旋标记（ASL）和化学交换饱和转移（CEST）。它们可以用在现有的医院核磁共振扫描仪上，比其他替代品更便宜、更安全，并提供了全新的理解疾病的方法。例如，它们可以用来探测痴呆症的早期阶段，在没有活检的情况下评估癌症的严重程度，或者监测患者对治疗的反应。Michael Chappell教授的研究小组（以前在牛津大学，现在在诺丁汉大学）利用多年来政府资助的具有临床影响的成功项目，生产了世界领先的学术用ASL和CEST软件工具。目前，这些工具没有在医院使用，因为它们操作复杂。我们已经确定的机会是使我们的工具可供非专业用户使用，这将使更多的患者从ASL和CEST扫描中受益。我们建议开发一套全面集成的ASL/CEST软件包，供医院常规使用。医学成像将在解决人口老龄化带来的医疗保健挑战方面发挥关键作用，因此该项目与英国政府的“健康老龄化”大挑战领域保持一致。一个热门的例子是阿尔茨海默病：最近已经证明，如果及早开始治疗，新药lecanemab_可以减缓疾病的进展。ASL可以检测阿尔茨海默氏症的早期症状，因此可以用于人群筛查。通过及早识别需要治疗的患者，更少的患者在晚年需要昂贵的全职护理，这为医疗保健系统节省了资金。正因为如此，痴呆问题的跨党派议会小组主席表示，应该重新关注早期检测：ASL可以安全、廉价地提供这种检测。

Quantified Imaging will enable hospitals to take advantage of two new types of MRI scan, called arterial spin labelling (ASL) and chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST). These can be used on existing hospital MRI scanners, are cheaper and safer than the alternatives, and offer entirely new ways of understanding disease. For example, they can be used to probe the early stages of dementia, assess cancer severity without biopsy or monitor a patient's response to treatment.Professor Michael Chappell's research group (previously at the University of Oxford, now at the University of Nottingham) produce the world's leading ASL and CEST software tools for academic use, drawing on years of successful Government-funded projects with clinical impact. Currently, these tools are not used in hospitals because they are complex to operate. The opportunity we have identified is to make our tools accessible for non-specialist users, which will enable more patients to benefit from ASL and CEST scans. We propose to develop a comprehensive and integrated ASL/CEST software package for routine hospital use.Medical imaging will play a key role in addressing the healthcare challenges imposed by an ageing population, and thus this project aligns with the UK Government's grand challenge area of _Healthy Ageing_. A topical example is Alzheimer's disease: the new medicine _lecanemab_ has recently been shown to slow the progression of disease if treatment is started early. ASL can detect the early-stage symptoms of Alzheimer's and could therefore be used for population screening. By identifying patients that need treatment at an earlier date, fewer patients would end up requiring expensive full-time care in their later years, which saves money for healthcare systems. Because of this, the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on dementia has stated that there should be a renewed focus on early detection: ASL can provide this safely and cheaply.