A Virtual Laboratory for Image-based Neuroscience Discovery: Collaborative Research and Science Education in the Era of “big data”

Abstract: Dr. Guttmann’s Center for Neurological Imaging (CNI) in the Department of Radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital developed one of the first large scale MS repositories integrating MRI images with clinical and biological data, as well as an image analysis workflow manager tightly linked to this repository. These technologies have successfully been used over close to 15 years at the Partners MS Center, and have led, among other initiatives, to a large collaboration between the Partners MS Center, Biogen, and Verily Life Sciences. The database currently has 25,000+ MRI exams, derived image analysis metrics from close to 15,000 exams, as well as structured clinical data from over 45,000 patient visits.

A few years ago, Dr. Guttmann and his collaborators developed a prototype infrastructure for a virtual laboratory that was successfully tested in the context of the U.S. Network of Pediatric MS Centers of Excellence. Based on the experience gathered with these systems, Dr. Guttmann's lab has most recently built SPINE (Structured Planning and Implementation of New Explorations), a web platform for collaborative medical research projects involving imaging. SPINE assists project owners in the efficient planning and execution of their experiments.

SPINE offers a set of web-based image annotation tools that enable the crowdsourcing of image analysis. Combining these tools with automated image analysis pipelines (including new, machine/deep learning approaches) will enable fully scalable analysis of high-resolution MRI protocols that have gained wide acceptance over the last couple of years, and have been recommended for use in at least two major “big data” MS initiatives: the France-wide OFSEP and the international SUMMIT consortia, which together include close to 50,000 MS patients.

Most recently, Dr. Guttmann was funded by the International Progressive MS Alliance (IPMSA) to manage (using SPINE) a large-scale project titled “Identifying a biomarker of disability progression for use in clinical trials”, that aims to develop next generation MRI markers of clinical disease progression to be used as primary outcome measures in phase 2 trials for progressive MS (PMS) in a fashion analogous to the use of Gadolinium-enhancement in relapsing MS trials. Furthermore, jointly with the University of Bordeaux’ Excellence Initiative, Dr. Guttmann has recently developed and tested a “serious game” tablet application that enables teaching, skill certification and data collection for SPINE in a gamified setting.