ASPIRE (Arterial spin labelling Scanner- and Patient-Independent Robust Evaluation) aims to facilitate brain perfusion imaging by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for dementia diagnosis and prognosis in clinical pharmaceutical studies and clinical practice.

To establish the diagnosis of dementia - such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) - and the effect of medication on prognosis, doctors and pharmacists rely on imaging biomarkers. Arterial spin labelling (ASL) is a relatively new MRI measure and potential biomarker that can accurately measure brain blood flow - also known as perfusion - without the administration of contrast agents. As a result, this technique is entirely harmless and can be repeated as often as necessary. Because diseases such as dementia alter brain perfusion, this technique can potentially predict the evolution of the disease. This technique could also be used to demonstrate whether blood flow improves with new drugs developed to alter the course of the disease, and thus to estimate the effectiveness of a drug in the brain.

The ASPIRE consortium combines the industry's latest advances to provide a robust, non-invasive imaging technique for AD prediction, seamlessly integrated into the standard MRI examination routine. Artificial intelligence (AI) methods will be used to analyse localized disease-specific changes in brain perfusion for diagnosis support.

Project partners are MEDIRI GmbH (Heidelberg, Germany), Gold Standard Phantoms Limited (London, UK), and the Amsterdam University Medical Center (UMC), location VUmc (Amsterdam, the Netherlands). All partners bring their specific scientific excellence into the project. Gold Standard Phantoms has developed a unique MRI phantom “QASPER”, which simulates the blood circulation and perfusion in the brain, and will be using it for standardisation of the imaging methods. Amsterdam UMC leads the development of the advanced ASL analysis software “ExploreASL”, which is already widely applied to quantify brain perfusion in 10,000 brain scans in more than 30 studies worldwide. MEDIRI provides the cloud-based medical image platform “mTRIAL”, serving secure image upload, pseudonymisation, and processing in current multicentre clinical trials. Together, the ASPIRE partners join forces to establish integrated Software As A Service (SaaS) as an easy-to-use, secure, cloud-based application, to support the diagnosis of dementia in both clinical trials and daily radiological practice.

Prof Barkhof - listed by Thompson-Reuter as one of the most influential scientists worldwide - from the Amsterdam UMC says: “ASL has been a promising technique for many years, but its clinical implementation has been hindered by lack of reference data and standard processing. I am excited by the prospect that ASPIRE will tackle these issues and allow radiologists to finally take advantage of this beautiful technique”.

Prof Golay, CEO of Gold Standard Phantoms (GSP) and Chair of MR Neurophysics and Translational Neuroscience at UCL, London, UK says: “This project comes at the right time to further GSP’s leadership in the development of Quantitative Imaging Methods and will enable to open the market for our QASPER phantom beyond Academic Research Centres. I am thrilled to be able to collaborate with such great partners on a European level”.

The German CRO MEDIRI will take the project lead in the consortium. Managing Director Dr. Gregori states: “This is a great opportunity to contribute our ASL and image processing expertise to help in the societal challenge of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. I am excited to work together in this strong consortium. We are looking forward to delivering a diagnostic service solution that really will make a difference.”

ASPIRE is a three years project with a total budget of 2.3 Million €, co-funded by the EUREKA member countries and the European Union Horizon 2020 Framework Programme.

Gold Standard Phantoms is happy to announce that we, together with the National Physical Laboratory and NEL, have been awarded a £150,000 project from Innovate UK’s 'Analysis for Innovators' competition to create 'Porous Modelling within a Perfusion Phantom'. Our challenge will be addressed by building a micro-scale model of our material to understand dispersion, and a macro-scale model to apply dispersion to our phantom. We will partner with NPL, who bring expertise in mathematical modelling, analysis of complex systems, and characterisation and metrology, all essential to project success.

Gold Standard Phantoms Limited is pleased to announce that it was successful in receiving funding of £100,000 from Innovate UK as part of the Precision Medicine competition for development of an automatic calibration software for standardisation of MR diffusion imaging, the most important quantitative imaging biomarker used for detection of early changes in prostate cancer.

Gold Standard Phantoms are happy to announce that it has secured an additional £840,000 in private investment, in order to bring its first product to market and establish itself as a key provider of calibration services for clinical quantitative medical imaging worldwide.

GSP was founded in 2014 with the aim of providing a solution to the issue of calibration and quality assurance in quantitative medical imaging.  It was the receiver of the prestigious Small Business Research Initiative Healthcare's Phase I and Phase II awards in 2015 and 2016 for a total of £1.1 million, which enabled it to bring its first product, an imaging standard for Arterial Spin Labelling Perfusion MRI, from early stage prototype through to commercial product. It has also, together with the National Physical Laboratory and NEL, been awarded a £170,000 project from Innovate UK’s 'Analysis for Innovators' competition to create a 'traceable calibration for an MRI perfusion measurement'.

GSP's first product, QASPER, is an advanced calibration phantom for Arterial Spin Labelling (ASL). Its features include a unique MRI-compatible pump design, the use of proprietary technology to simulate capillary blood flow, and is calibrated to international standards.

ASL is a magnetic resonance imaging technique for measuring tissue perfusion using a freely diffusible intrinsic tracer. ASL is non-invasive in nature and offers the ability to quantitatively measure tissue perfusion, which makes this method ideal for research and clinical studies. Recent technical advances have increased its sensitivity and extended its potential applications; it is now available for routine clinical practice in many institutions.

Quantitative Medical Imaging is not yet a clinical reality. Despite wide acceptance in research, intrinsically quantitative methods such as ASL are still not used in daily clinical practice due to the lack of internationally recognised standards and governance to enable quality assurance of quantitative data. As such, our first product will provide the enabling step to make the clinical use of quantitative ASL possible.

With this investment, Gold Standard Phantoms welcomes Frédéric Schenk, Group Vice President at SGS, and Riccardo Pavoncelli of Augmenta Capital to GSP's Board of Directors.

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