Scientists will use artificial intelligence to analyze more than a million brain scans to develop a tool to predict a person’s risk of dementia.
As part of a global research project called NEUrii, researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Dundee will examine CT and MRI scans of patients from Scotland taken over a period of more than a decade.
The team will use AI and machine learning to match the imaging data with linked health records and find patterns that could help doctors better determine a person’s risk of dementia.
By 2050, the number of people with dementia worldwide is expected to triple to 153 million. Researchers warn that this poses a rapidly growing threat to health and social care systems. The health and social care costs associated with dementia already exceed $1 trillion (£780 billion) a year, according to research.
The scientists’ goal is to develop digital tools that radiologists can use when examining patients to determine the risk of dementia and diagnose the disease and associated symptoms earlier.
The tools could also help accelerate the development of more precise treatments for dementia, it said.
Prof Emanuele Trucco, an AI and medical imaging expert in Dundee, said: “This new dataset will be of great benefit to neurological researchers.
“If we succeed in the proof of concept, we will have a suite of software tools that can be seamlessly and unobtrusively integrated into routine radiology procedures, support clinical decision-making and identify dementia risk as early as possible.”
With the approval of the Health and Social Care Public Welfare and Data Protection Board, part of the Scottish National Health Service (NHS), up to 1.6 million images will be scanned.
The data will be held at the Scottish National Safe Haven, which has been commissioned by Public Health Scotland to provide a secure platform for the use of NHS electronic data for research purposes.
Project co-leader Prof Will Whiteley of the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences in Edinburgh, said: “Better use of simple brain scans to predict dementia will lead to a better understanding of dementia and potentially earlier diagnosis of its causes, which in turn will facilitate the development of new treatments.”
“Currently, treatments for dementia are expensive, rare and of uncertain benefit. If we can collect data from a large group of people at high risk who then consent to participate in trials, we can really start developing new treatments.”
