PSYSCAN: Ultra High Risk
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Translating neuroimaging findings from research into clinical practice (PSYSCAN): Ultra High Risk
IRAS ID
190194
Contact name
Keith Brennan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Neuroimaging (NI) has enormous potential to improve the clinical care of patients with psychiatric disorders, but has yet to deliver. The PSYSCAN project will address this issue directly by developing a NI-based tool that will help clinicians resolve key clinical issues in the management of patients with psychotic disorders.
Clinicians will use the tool to assess patients with a standardised set of NI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)) scans and complementary demographic, clinical, cognitive, and genetic measures. The clinician will enter data on to an iPad, which will be combined with NI data and transferred to secure data hosting company, IXICO. Key features of the analysis include the assessment of NI data at a network level, the integration of NI and non-NI data, and the use of machine learning methods to make predictions specific to the patient being assessed.
The results will be delivered to the clinician’s iPad and will indicate the likelihood of a given clinical or functional outcome. The tool will have 3 clinical applications. PSYSCAN-Predict will facilitate prediction of the onset of psychosis in high-risk subjects. PSYSCAN-Stratify will aid early diagnosis and the stratification of patients with first episode psychosis according to future course and outcome. PSYSCAN-Monitor will allow clinicians to measure progression of the disorder over time.
Once developed, the tool will be validated and then be disseminated to clinical centres across the EU.
The PSYSCAN project involves a world class consortium of experts on NI and psychiatry that unites academic centres, small and medium enterprises with image processing and computerised testing expertise, a large medical device provider, and the pharmaceutical industry. The consortium is thus ideally suited to translating expertise and knowledge in NI to build a tool that may potentially be used to improve the care of patients with psychiatric disorders.
REC name
London - City & East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/LO/0374
Date of REC Opinion
26 Apr 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion