In November 2021, the researchpapertitled "Population-specific brain [18F]-FDG PET templates of Chinese subjects for statistical parametric mapping" by Professor Wang Hongkai's team from the School of Biomedical Engineering was published in theNatureportforliojournalScientific Data(https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-021-01089-1). The study, based on a vast clinical dataset of brain Positron Emission Tomography (shortened as PET), underwent rigorous data filtering andapplied machine learning algorithms to generate the average and standard deviation imaging atlas of the Chinese population's brain using PET.
Previously, only Western population's open-source data is available in the field of brain PET atlas research.This studyprovides a statistical parametric map (SPM) quantitative comparison basis for the early diagnosis of degenerative neurological disorders in the Chinese population, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. The findings have been made open-source to the global community on the NITRC website. Along with the data, application algorithm programs havealsobeen releasedtofacilitatethe usage of the atlasby more clinical researchers.
The study was a collaborative effort over three years by Professor Wang Hongkai from our university,graduatestudent Tian Yang, undergraduate Liu Yang, and Professor Zhang Yanjun's team from the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University. The achievement could not have been possible without the in-depth and meticulous collaboration between medical and engineering fields,as well asthe persistent relay contributionsmade by two successive cohorts ofstudents.
The research is ongoing,withcontinuouscollection ofimaging data from across the country in medical-engineering collaboration, aiming to further enhance the information content and statistical value of the atlas. This atlas is one of the series of research results funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81971693). In recent years, the research group has constructed a deformable digital full-body atlas of the Chinese population and an open-source software platform for AI medical image analysis based on nationwide medical images, successfully achieving the industrial transformation of scientific research results.
