BBSRC ICURe: Quantified Imaging

量化成像将使医院能够利用两种新型的MRI扫描，称为动脉自旋标记(ASL)和化学交换饱和转移(CEST)。它们可以用于现有的医院核磁共振扫描仪，比替代方案更便宜、更安全，并提供了理解疾病的全新方式。例如，它们可以用来探测痴呆症的早期阶段，在不做活检的情况下评估癌症的严重程度，或者监测患者的治疗反应。迈克尔·查佩尔教授的研究小组(以前在牛津大学，现在在诺丁汉大学)利用多年来成功的具有临床影响的政府资助项目，生产出世界领先的学术用ASL和CEST软件工具。目前，这些工具不在医院使用，因为它们操作起来很复杂。我们已经确定的机会是让非专家用户可以访问我们的工具，这将使更多的患者从ASL和CEST扫描中受益。我们建议开发一个全面和集成的ASL/CEST软件包，供医院常规使用。医学成像将在应对人口老龄化带来的医疗挑战方面发挥关键作用，因此该项目与英国政府的重大挑战领域--健康老龄化--保持一致。阿尔茨海默病就是一个典型的例子：新药lecanemab最近被证明可以减缓疾病的进展，如果及早开始治疗的话。ASL可以检测出阿尔茨海默氏症的早期症状，因此可以用于人群筛查。通过及早确定需要治疗的患者，最终将有更少的患者在晚年需要昂贵的全职护理，这为医疗系统节省了资金。正因为如此，痴呆症跨党派议会小组主席表示，应重新关注早期发现：ASL可以安全且廉价地提供这一服务。

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.