PI: Mojtaba Zarei, Clinical Prof., Department of Clinical Research

“I started my work in SDU as Lundbeck Prof. of Neuroimaging from the beginning of this year. My job is to setup a Neuroimaging Research Team in SDU. To do this computational infrastructure is essential. This usually is costly and requires considerable expertise. The eScience team provided a superb service to my team and together we developed Neuroimaging Analysis Platform which is conveniently available to all UCloud users on site or remotely for my research collaborators. The platform makes the best use of considerable CPU and GPUs available in UCloud. This platform will only get better as more people use it and provide feedback. Without such infrastructure and expertise available at eScience, our research would be impossible.

We analysed data from AHBA and ENIGMA datasets to interrogate the transcription-imaging co-locations in deletion syndrome (D22), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), high risk psychosis (HRP), schizophrenia (SCz), bipolar disorder (BD), major depressive disorder (MDD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This study included MRI data from 30,000 subjects. Complex mathematical and statistical analysis was used to find combination of genes (among 20,000 genes) that are maximally covaried with brain MRI changes. For each PLS, bootstrapping (10,000 times) and spin permutation (10,000 times) were performed to avoid random associations. Such analysis would have taken (if at all possible) over 6 months on a high-power personal computer, but we used Neuroimaging Platform on UCloud and managed to seamlessly reach the result in two weeks.” 

Mojtaba Zarei, Clinical Prof.

Figure 1. Spatial association between gene expression and brain atrophy across psychiatric disorders.

Figure 2. Gene expression similarity across different psychiatric disorders.

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