Support for neuroimaging in multicentre clinical research studies

CATI is a French academic service platform, now labeled as a multi-institute service unit US52-UAR2031. It has been supporting about 60 multicentre neuroimaging studies in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders including several interventional trials.

The platform was created in 2011 and aims at making multicenter neuroimaging management accessible to any project at a reasonable cost. Building upon a large network of standardized imaging facilities, the platform collects and monitors acquisitions and performs systematic image processing from a wide portfolio covering most of the MRI / PET / SPECT modalities.

Specific needs can be addressed on demand (new MRI sequence, PET radiotracer, or image processing pipeline) thanks to close links with surrounding research labs and a network of collaborations (eg REMI network). Raw data and analyses can be made available to the study’s consortium through a secure web service according to the requests of the project leader. Thanks to the standardization efforts across studies and pathologies, the platform fosters collaborations in order to speed-up the emergence of research projects at the scale of big data.