Community survey results show that standardisation of preclinical imaging techniques remains a challenge

PURPOSE: To support acquisition of accurate, reproducible and high-quality preclinical imaging data, various standardisation resources have been developed over the years. However, it is unclear the impact of those efforts in current preclinical imaging practices. To better understand the status quo in the field of preclinical imaging standardisation, the STANDARD group of the European Society of Molecular Imaging (ESMI) put together a community survey and a forum for discussion at the European Molecular Imaging Meeting (EMIM) 2022. This paper reports on the results from the STANDARD survey and the forum discussions that took place at EMIM2022. PROCEDURES: The survey was delivered to the community by the ESMI office and was promoted through the Society channels, email lists and webpages. The survey contained seven sections organised as generic questions and imaging modality-specific questions. The generic questions focused on issues regarding data acquisition, data processing, data storage, publishing and community awareness of international guidelines for animal research. Specific questions on practices in optical imaging, PET, CT, SPECT, MRI and ultrasound were further included. RESULTS: Data from the STANDARD survey showed that 47% of survey participants do not have or do not know if they have QC/QA guidelines at their institutes. Additionally, a large variability exists in the ways data are acquired, processed and reported regarding general aspects as well as modality-specific aspects. Moreover, there is limited awareness of the existence of international guidelines on preclinical (imaging) research practices. CONCLUSIONS: Standardisation of preclinical imaging techniques remains a challenge and hinders the transformative potential of preclinical imaging to augment biomedical research pipelines by serving as an easy vehicle for translation of research findings to the clinic. Data collected in this project show that there is a need to promote and disseminate already available tools to standardise preclinical imaging practices

StandardRat: A multi-center consensus protocol to enhance functional connectivity specificity in the rat brain

Task-free functional connectivity in animal models provides an experimental framework to examine connectivity phenomena under controlled conditions and allows comparison with invasive or terminal procedures. To date, animal acquisitions are performed with varying protocols and analyses that hamper result comparison and integration. We introduce StandardRat, a consensus rat functional MRI acquisition protocol tested across 20 centers. To develop this protocol with optimized acquisition and processing parameters, we initially aggregated 65 functional imaging datasets acquired in rats from 46 centers. We developed a reproducible pipeline for the analysis of rat data acquired with diverse protocols and determined experimental and processing parameters associated with a more robust functional connectivity detection. We show that the standardized protocol enhances biologically plausible functional connectivity patterns, relative to pre-existing acquisitions. The protocol and processing pipeline described here are openly shared with the neuroimaging community to promote interoperability and cooperation towards tackling the most important challenges in neuroscience.Competing Interest StatementAline Seuwen is an employee of Bruker, the manufacturer of preclinical MRI systems used for the acquisition of the majority of the datasets in this collection. Emmanuel L. Barbier is a consultant for Bruker. Benjamin Vidal is an employee of Theranexus company. Stefan Zurbruegg, Arno Doelemeyer, and Nicolau Beckmann are employees of Novartis Pharma AG. Thoralf Niendorf is founder and CEO of MRI.TOOLS GmbH

A consensus protocol for functional connectivity analysis in the rat brain

Task-free functional connectivity in animal models provides an experimental framework to examine connectivity phenomena under controlled conditions and allows for comparisons with data modalities collected under invasive or terminal procedures. Currently, animal acquisitions are performed with varying protocols and analyses that hamper result comparison and integration. Here we introduce StandardRat, a consensus rat functional magnetic resonance imaging acquisition protocol tested across 20 centers. To develop this protocol with optimized acquisition and processing parameters, we initially aggregated 65 functional imaging datasets acquired from rats across 46 centers. We developed a reproducible pipeline for analyzing rat data acquired with diverse protocols and determined experimental and processing parameters associated with the robust detection of functional connectivity across centers. We show that the standardized protocol enhances biologically plausible functional connectivity patterns relative to previous acquisitions. The protocol and processing pipeline described here is openly shared with the neuroimaging community to promote interoperability and cooperation toward tackling the most important challenges in neuroscience

A consensus protocol for functional connectivity analysis in the rat brain

International audienc