After the launch of the biggest medical imaging study in the UK, MRI images might help researchers study body organs before the emergence of a disease. This is what a group of UK-based researchers will be doing after launching the world’s biggest imaging study.
Affiliated with the UK non-profit organization, Biobank, the scientists plan to capture images of human hearts, brains, bones, and arteries during the study. The study will use 100,000 patients, and technologies like ultrasound, X-ray, and MRI. The outcomes will be integrated with other kinds of health and lifestyle data that the group has gathered over the last decade. Then they will try to use this to understand how disease can be prevented and treated.
Images and health data might disclose fascinating findings of the body conditions before the diagnosis of illness. If for instance, some patients used in this imaging study finally got sick with dementia, the researchers would retrieve and study brain scans and other health data that was collected before the onset of dementia.
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In case they discover the particular thing that patients had in common, researchers might see the exact cause of the disease and find new treatment methods. The goal of the researchers is to read the brain scans for revelations into other diseases such as depression, stroke and Alzheimer’s. Bone scans might offer solutions for osteoporosis and how it is related to other health conditions. Comprehensive images of the heart could reveal signs of damage before the emergence of a heart attack.
Other sorts of scans will study how body fat is distributed in comparison to the body muscle where factors like genetic indicators for a problem like obesity, lifestyle, high cholesterol and high blood pressure will be considered. Over the years, the images of the brain or the heart have consistently been similar. However, this UK-based study uses ten thousand times more participants than most believable studies that use one hundred attendees. Hence, the study will offer more conclusive, credible and reliable outcomes.
The research will begin with eight thousand patients at the Biobank headquarters, Stockport, close to Manchester in northwest England, UK. Then it will extend to the south and Newcastle in the coming year.