Scientists and researchers are set to examine hundreds of thousands of brain scans to build a software tool they hope will be able to predict a person’s risk of dementia. A group of 20 experts will analyse data from CT and MRI scans using AI along with information contained in health records to find patterns that could indicate the likelihood of the condition developing. The team aims to create a digital tool that radiologists can use when scanning patients to determine their dementia risk and diagnose early stages of related diseases.
They believe isolating a patient group with a high risk of dementia will enable the development of more precise treatments for various types of the condition, including Alzheimer’s. The team is made up data scientists and clinical researchers from the universities of Edinburgh and Dundee who are working as part of a global research collaboration called NEURii, which launched a year ago. They estimate they will analyse up to 1.
6 million images during the project, which they are using with the approval of the Public Benefit and Privacy Panel for Health and Social Care, a part of NHS Scotland. The data will be held safely in the Scottish National Safe Haven, which was commissioned by Public Health Scotland to provide a secure platform for the use of NHS electronic data for research. Professor Will Whiteley of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, who is co-leading the project, said: “Better use of simple brain s.