14 Oct 21. DPUK Harmonisation study

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The DPUK Harmonisation study aims to:

• minimise PET-MR measurement variability through standardisation of scanning methods;
• & then measure residual variability at & between each of several different imaging centres.

This will be important for future multi-centre studies.

The Edinburgh Imaging Radiochemistry facility produced flutemetamol for Newcastle University, to allow its imaging centre to participate in this & future studies. The logistics including timing radiopharmaceutical creation with transportation & scanner availability over a 100 mile distance, was successful due to extremely close communication & coordination of the teams in both Edinburgh & Newcastle.

The success proves the principle that multi-centre studies are feasible even when distance & time might otherwise be significant barriers to success.

The anonymised imaging data collected will form a reference dataset that can be shared across the Dementias Platform UK (DPUK) network, & which can be used to evaluate new methods of analysing imaging data.

There are currently eight UK-based PET-MR scanners, located at:

• University of Edinburgh
• Newcastle University
• University of Cambridge
• University of Manchester
• University of Sheffield
• Imperial College London
• King’s College London
• University College London

We asked Catriona Wimberley, Research Fellow in PET-MR physics her thoughts on the study.

“Despite the challenges brought about by COVID-19, there has been PET-MR scanning successfully carried out for participants sent to multiple sites, which gives important datasets to harmonise imaging studies between sites.”

The Edinburgh Imaging team are grateful to the volunteers for their participation in the study, which highlights how collaborative research was still able to proceed safely during the pandemic.