IMAGEMEND brings together a consortium of European scientists with extensive experience that is ideally suited for its neuroimaging and multi-modal investigations into psychiatric illnesses and subsequent clinical translation as diagnostic and predictive tests. The consortium includes 14 partners from 4 EU and 3 EU-associated countries. The EU partners in the project come from Germany, Italy, Netherlands and the UK and the remaining partners from Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. All IMAGEMEND partners are internationally renowned research institutions with distinguished track records in psychiatric neuroimaging and genetics and continue their existing, successful collaboration in the proposed project.
|
Beneficiary name
|
Short name
|
Country
|
|---|
Project coordinator
Prof. Dr. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg (CIMH) is the Project Coordinator of IMAGEMEND. The deputy Coordinator is Dr. Emanuel Schwarz. The coordinator is responsible for the overall scientific progress of the project and the quality of the results, and for the timely submission of all required documents and reports to the EC. As the overall leader of the project, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg is the chair of the Steering Committee and the General Assembly.
 |
|
 |
|
Project Management Office (PMO)
The project management office (coordinator and concentris) is located both at concentris in Fürstenfeldbruck and with the coordinator in Mannheim whereas the coordinator is mainly dealing with the scientific management and concentris is taking care of the administrative, financial and contractual management and other organisational tasks. The PMO is the central node of communication for IMAGEMEND.
The project manager (administrative, organisational and financial management) is Dr. Ameli Schwalber at concentris.
 |
|
Mental disorders are leading causes of disability, absence from work and premature retirement in Europe. While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) facilities are broadly available and a vast research literature exists, few neuroimaging applications have reached clinical practice in psychiatry. A major problem is that mental illnesses are currently diagnosed as discrete entities defined clinically. Instead, recent results show that mental disorders are best understood as quantitative alterations in neural systems relevant across traditional diagnostic boundaries that reflect individual, genetic and environmental risk factors.
In the IMAGEMEND consortium, we aim to discover these systems to identify the patient characteristics most relevant for treatment, derive biomarkers and decision rules from this systems-level dimensional account, and systematically validate biomarker panels in patient, high-risk and epidemiological samples to produce automated imaging-based diagnostic and predictive tests tailored for wide distribution throughout Europe in standard clinical settings.
Focusing on schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, we have assembled one of Europe’s largest datasets combining neuroimaging, genetic, environmental, cognitive and clinical information on approximately 13.000 participants, and have recruited international replication datasets of more than 30.000 people. This unique resource will be processed using a new generation of multivariate statistical analysis tools to optimize existing imaging technology for the benefit of patients. We will also develop new imaging technology to enable the direct imaging-based therapeutic modification of neural circuits through rapid real-time MRI.
Our deliverables will promote personalized treatment through more accurate patient stratification, allow diagnoses at the pre-symptomatic stage for early intervention and prevention, and improve prediction of treatment response and disease progression.
