Project participants: Consortium GARR (IT), CNR (IT), Consorzio COMETA (IT), Fatebenefratelli (IT), University San Raffaele (IT), University of Genoa (IT), University of Foggia (IT), Fondazione SDN (IT), MAAT France (FR), Imperial College (UK), Uniwersytet Warszawski (PL), Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Toulouse (FR), Alzheimer Europe (LU) EC Call: FP7-INFRAS – VRC Contract n: RI Project type: CP-CSA Duration: 24 months Total budget: € EC Funding: € DECIDE: an Integrated e-Infrastructure and e- Service for Research and Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer Disease

DECIDE in a Nutshell Creation of a e-Infrastructure and service dedicated to research and early diagnosis of AD and other neurodegerative diseases AD is one of EU’s greatest challanges for the next few years Intended not only for research purposes, but for the exploitation into clinical practice Started on: 1 st September 2010 Duration: 24 Months Requested EC contribution: ~2.4 M€ Co-ordinated by GARR, the Italian R&E network, COMETA has the technical coordination Scientific Coordination by the neuGRID Principal Investigator Involves 13 European Partners + European NoE of research and healthcare centres specialised on AD + the European network of patient advocate societies All stakeholders involved, from the network layer to end-users

Project Objectives To provide the Neuroscientific and Medical community with a dedicated e-Infrastructure relying on GÉANT, EGI and NeuGrid To deploy a secure and user-friendly service for the early diagnosis and research on dementia and other brain diseases linking large distributed DBs of multi-modal neuro-images To validate the e-Infrastructure and the service with real patient cases To propose a business model to ensure the sustainability of the infrastructure after the end of the project and facilitate its extension to new communities and pathologies To disseminate the results and provide training programmes promoting the adoption of the DECIDE infrastructure and service

The Project Workplan at a Glance Networking Activities Creation stable liaisons with relevant stakeholders in the scientific and e- Infrastructure domains Dissemination of results and reaching out to the medical community Service Activities Network and GRID provisioning and management Exposing the medical database to the applications running on the e-Infrastructure Joint Research Activities Porting of the diagnostic algorithms Design of the diagnostic service User validation and Testing

A vertical approach to e-Health, targeting the needs of neuroscientists community through the provisioning of an e-Infrastructure aimed at supporting them in the daily execution of the diagnosis CONSORTIUM GARR - Italy CONSORZIO COMETA – Italy Network & GRID Layer Infrastructure Partners CNR - Italy UNIVERSITY OF GENOA - UNIGE Italy UNIVERSITY OF FOGGIA - UNIFG Italy MAAT FRANCE - maat G - France IMPERIAL COLLEGE – United Kingdom UNIWERSYTET WARSZAWSKI - Poland Application Layer Partners IRCCS FATEBENEFRATELLI - Italy UNIVERSITY SAN RAFFAELE - Italy FONDAZIONE SDN - Italy CENTRE HOSPITALIER UNIVERSITAIRE DE TOULOUSE - France ALZHEIMER EUROPE - Luxembourg Research & Healthcare Layer Partners The Project Consortium

DECIDE e-Infrastructure Layers

The DECIDE Service Concept Masking complexity for the end user Web interface for ease of use and access from everywhere Multiple quantitative algorithms for research and diagnosis Secure exploitation of large multimodal reference databases of normal subjects and patients Distributed reference DBs

How DECIDE Works Different user profiles with different workflows and authorization levels « Neurologist»: can upload patient images, ask for diagnostic tests to be performed, and get the report «Physician»: can set some attributes and perform diagnostic tests «Scientist»: can modify paramethers for research purposes All profiles need to attend a dedicated course and qualify in order to get access to the system

DECIDE e-Infrastructure Architecture Test Environment Production Environment DECIDE User ProfilesDECIDE Applications Job management (WMS, LB) Data management (LFC, AMGA) Information system (BDII) Robot certificates VOMS server Authentication & Authorization Training Robot Certificates server Applications’ GUI Repository platform GUI Grid e-Infrastructure API

DECIDE Applications GridSPM: specifically designed for SPECT and PET neurological clinical images provides an SPM analysis for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer Disease GridMRISeg: implements an automatic algorithm for the subcortical segmentation of MRI brain images for hippocampal volume estimation, using the auto context model (ACMAdaboost) developed by LONI GridEEG: implements EEG processing algorithms with the aim of detecting early symptoms of Alzheimer Disease and distinguishing different forms of degenerative impairment GridANN4ND: concerns the analysis of PET biomarkers in Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders and provides a classification of suspected patients through an Artificial Neural Network diagnostic application research application

Project Status The DECIDE distributed e-infrastructure and service is up and running. It is being released for user testing by a panel of selected early adopters, who will undergo dedicated training sessions to allow them to make the best use of the tool. Their feedback will result in further improvements to the four applications deployed by the project.

Next steps In addition, DECIDE can serve as a testing environment for new potential applications to be ported on the infrastructure. In the long term, this infrastructure could be extended to cover algorithms relating to other diseases of the brain and other organs, involving the whole life science research community.

Thank you for your kind attention! Find more about DECIDE at or contact us for questions and collaboration opportunities at