Academics from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health, along with other partners receive a share of the €18 million project funded through the European Union

A major European project, led by the University of Sheffield, will develop sophisticated image-based biophysical models of the human brain to enable early diagnosis of dementia and help doctors predict the progression of the disease.

The project will be the first to combine a wide range of physiological data from medical imaging – such as blood flow, brain tissue properties and cellular activity – with psychological measures such as memory and cognitive function. It will also bring in demographic, genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors, making it much more sensitive than existing diagnostic tools.

The aim is to develop a way for doctors to identify at an early stage – before obvious symptoms appear – not only whether a patient has or is developing dementia, but which form of dementia it is. Diagnosis of the most common form of dementia – Alzheimer’s – in the UK still takes an average of 32 months after symptoms are first noticed compared to 20 months in Europe as a whole.

Currently clinicians rely on basic cognitive tests and conventional brain scans for diagnosis of dementia but these are not sufficiently sensitive to indentify the disease at an early stage. This project’s aim is to identify a much wider range of markers which provide better and earlier diagnosis, which in turn would help applying interventions at a time when it is possible to delay the progression of the disease. This would be not only improving patients’ quality of life, but it would also reduce the burden on carers and the enormous costs of supporting people with advanced dementia.

The engineers, scientists and clinicians who together hope to tackle this issue will draw on historical data from over 20,000 patients across Europe to build their model. In addition, three studies will gather new data from 150 patients to test hypotheses on contributory factors for the disease.
One of the studies that will take place in Sheffield and will involve a new brain imaging technique which can identify changes in the elasticity and rigidity of brain tissue.

The research will also take into account the possible impact of other diseases on the onset of dementia, particularly those such as diabetes and lung disorders. The strength of this model is that it will be able to draw useful information from so many different variables and factors to make the diagnosis more definitive and more specific.

The four-year, €18 million project is funded through the European Union and involves universities and industrial partners from the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Spain, Norway, Austria, the Netherlands and Portugal.

The research in Sheffield will involve staff from the University’s Faculty of Engineering and Professor Annalena Venneri and Professor Iain Wilkinson from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health, in collaboration with staff at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.