UK Biobank Imaging Enhancement Main phase

The challenges of understanding the determinants of common life-threatening and disabling diseases are substantial. Such conditions are typically caused by many different exposures that each have moderate effects and interact with each other in complex ways. Prospective cohorts, such as UK Biobank, have advantages for the comprehensive and reliable quantification of the combined effects of different types of risk factor on health outcomes. In particular, exposures can be assessed before they are affected by disease or its management, and diseases can be assessed that are not readily investigated by retrospective studies (e.g. dementia). Moreover, all of the beneficial and adverse effects of a specific factor on the life-time risks of different diseases can be considered. Prospective studies do, however, need to involve large numbers of participants because only a relatively small proportion will develop any particular condition. UK Biobank has involved the collection of extensive baseline questionnaire data, physical measurements and biological samples from 500,000 men and women aged 40-69 at baseline, and their health is now being followed long-term. This proposal is for enhanced phenotyping of 100,000 of the participants with a set of imaging modalities that have been carefully chosen to provide considerable additional information that is likely to be relevant to many different health outcomes.