Community Survey Results Show that Standardisation of Preclinical Imaging Techniques Remains a Challenge

Abstract

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.

A systematic review of the relationship between magnetic resonance imaging based resting-state and structural networks in the rodent brain

“…Despite common challenges in harmonizing imaging setups and protocols, in which rodent MRI is no exception (Mannheim et al, 2018 ; Gozzi and Zerbi, 2023 ; Tavares et al, 2023 ), a recent multicenter study proved the detectability of stable, functional networks in 17 mice rs-fMRI datasets using a standard image processing and analysis pipeline (Grandjean et al, 2020 ). A similar DTI fiber tracking study is pending; however, there are promising first attempts to improve reproducibility for the specific needs of DTI in small animals (Jelescu et al, 2022 ), as it has been done for clinical protocols (Grech-Sollars et al, 2015 ).…”

“…A similar DTI fiber tracking study is pending; however, there are promising first attempts to improve reproducibility for the specific needs of DTI in small animals (Jelescu et al, 2022 ), as it has been done for clinical protocols (Grech-Sollars et al, 2015 ). Besides the agreement and adoption of quality standards for acquisition (Tavares et al, 2023 ), we expect a large variability in the results of the selected studies to be related to the differences in post-processing and application of more advanced analysis methods, i.e., graph theory (Scharwächter et al, 2022 ). The priority should be to adopt best practices in data analysis as initially described for human neuroimaging and to make the imaging data available (Nichols et al, 2017 ).…”