\n<\/p>\n
Scientists expect to gain unprecedented insights into human ageing and the earliest signs of disease after scanning 100,000 people from head to toe in the world\u2019s largest whole body imaging project.<\/p>\n
The completion of the decade-long task means qualifying researchers worldwide will have access to 1bn de-identified images of the hearts, brains, abdomens, blood vessels, bones and joints of volunteers alongside medical histories and rich data on their genetic makeup, health and lifestyle.<\/p>\n
Subsets of the images compiled by UK Biobank, which follows the health of half a million people in Britain, have already underpinned breakthroughs in how the heart influences psychiatric disorders and shown that the scans can predict dozens of future diseases. They also suggest no amount of alcohol consumption is healthy.<\/p>\n
\u201cResearchers now have an incredible window into the body,\u201d said Naomi Allen, the chief scientist at UK Biobank. \u201cFor the first time, researchers can study how we age and how diseases develop in stunning detail and at a massive scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope that the findings \u2026 will change the way the world detects and treats disease before people get sick,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The imaging project captured 12,000 images from each volunteer, revealing the size, shape and structure of the brain, bones, heart and other organs, along with bone density and body fat. Ultrasound scans on arteries in the neck looked for blockages or narrowing that raise the risk of stroke.<\/p>\n
Paul Matthews, the chair of the UK Biobank imaging group, and a professor of neuroscience at Imperial College London, said the scans were so detailed that scientists could spot people at higher risk of dementia from changes that were previously invisible. The scans reveal differences in brain size as small as a teaspoon of water, or a few tenths of a per cent of the brain\u2019s total volume, he said. The procedure is now being trialled in the NHS.<\/p>\n
Other work based on the brain scans found that consuming one to two units of alcohol per day was associated with changes in brain size and structure, potentially contributing to memory loss and dementia. \u201cUnfortunately, there is no perfectly safe level and certainly no benefit to the brain from just a glass of wine a day,\u201d Matthews said.<\/p>\n
<\/span>UK Biobank\u2019s project captured 12,000 detailed images from 100,000 volunteers, revealing the size, shape and structure of the brain, bones, heart and other organs, along with bone density and body fat.<\/span> Photograph: UK Biobank<\/p>\n Patricia Munroe, a professor of molecular medicine at Queen Mary University of London, works on the genetics of heart structure, function and disease. The new images capture cycles of heartbeats, allowing her to search for genes that govern the heart\u2019s function as a pump, as well as its structure, and see when they go awry.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Doctors have long used body mass index (BMI) to assess people\u2019s risk of diabetes and heart disease, but abdominal scans show that people with the same BMI and waist measurement can have radically different fat distributions, which alters their risk of heart disease.<\/p>\n UK Biobank is now re-scanning 60,000 volunteers to see how people\u2019s brains, bodies and bones change in the years after their first scan. Louise Thomas, a professor of metabolic imaging at the University of Westminster, has looked at body scans taken two years apart. \u201cThe results were shocking. The amount of visceral fat, the bad fat in the abdomen, had increased,\u201d she said. Muscle also becomes more fatty. \u201cAs we get older, we become more and more marbled,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re becoming wagyu beef.\u201d<\/p>\n Medical advances made from the images are expected to transform procedures in the NHS. One of Thomas\u2019s colleagues automated the detection of aneurysms \u2013 life-threatening bulges in blood vessel walls. While men are already screened for them, women are not, even though they are more serious in women. \u201cWe can do lots of things we weren\u2019t able to do before. It\u2019s quite extraordinary,\u201d Thomas added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scientists expect to gain unprecedented insights into human ageing and the earliest signs of disease after scanning 100,000 people from head to toe in the world\u2019s largest whole body imaging project. The completion of the decade-long task means qualifying researchers worldwide will have access to 1bn de-identified images of the hearts, brains, abdomens, blood vessels,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[270,4049,737,4048,3140,364,3141,2405,4050],"class_list":{"0":"post-10888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-change","9":"tag-detected","10":"tag-diseases","11":"tag-fullbody","12":"tag-medical","13":"tag-people","14":"tag-research","15":"tag-scans","16":"tag-treated"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}