The COVID-CNS Neuroimaging Working Group published the following article on "Reliability of multi-site UK Biobank MRI brain phenotypes for the assessment of neuropsychiatric complications of SARS-CoV-2 infection: The COVID-CNS travelling heads study" in PLOS One.
The group have produced a multi-modal brain MRI protocol comprising sequences for T1-weighted MRI, T2-FLAIR, diffusion MRI (dMRI), resting-state functional MRI (fMRI), susceptibility-weighted imaging (swMRI), and arterial spin labelling (ASL), that were defined in close approximation to prior UK Biobank (UKB) and C-MORE protocols for Siemens 3T systems. Further to this, they iteratively defined a comparable set of sequences for General Electric (GE) 3T systems.
Protocols are accessible to all. These tools will help other neuroimaging research studies in harmonising different scanners across mulitple sites in order to obtain consistent results.
See image below which shows representative T2 FLAIR images of the same subject scanned at each of the 4 sites in the travelling heads study as an example of how the harmonised tool works.
Creative Commons License for Travelling Heads proformas
This CC license means that you are free to use all the files within the resource and are able to share and adapt these files within your organisation.