Early Disease Detection: New Database Could Revolutionize Medicine
The UK Biobank has created over a billion scan images from volunteers, and scientists hope this data will lead to breakthroughs in the early detection of diseases.
In Great Britain, science has just gained access to a goldmine: researchers now have access to body scans of 100,000 volunteers, which have been taken since 2016. Each person has 12,000 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the brain, heart, and abdominal region, as well as full-body scans that also measure bone density and body fat. Over a billion images of organs, bones, and tissues are contained in the UK Biobank database. This data is supplemented by the individuals' genetic information, data on illnesses, lifestyle, environmental factors, and blood profiles. It is the largest study of its kind to date using such full-body scans.
The potential applications are raising great hopes in medicine. Many diseases begin to develop long before a person notices the first symptoms. Scientists can use the scan data to identify more precise patterns and processes in the body, contributing to early detection. “We can now understand exactly how organs age and how diseases develop,” says researcher Naomi Allen, who leads the scanning project. "We can make the invisible visible."
Initial Findings on Alcohol Consumption, Early Detection, and Dementia
The data is available to 22,000 registered scientists, and some findings have already been made. For example, it has been shown that there is no safe alcohol limit for our brain. According to UK Biobank scans, even one glass of wine a day leads to a measurable decrease in brain volume and an increased risk of dementia.
Another team has developed AI models to analyze the data and detect cancer, cardiovascular problems, or diseases of the pancreas, liver, kidneys, lungs, or osteoarthritis at an early stage. They concluded that the full-body scans are useful for identifying risks. Recognized problem areas could then be examined more precisely with targeted tests and further scans.
Another AI algorithm, trained with UK Biobank data, can now use brain scans and movement data fto detect early signs of dementia and Parkinson’s disease.
The project in Great Britain has been collecting health data from around 500,000 people for 20 years and making it available to the scientific community. Now, the body scans created with MRI and other devices are also part of this data.
