UK Biobank has completed its goal of collecting the brain, body and bone scans of 100,000 volunteers.
UK Biobank is a large-scale biomedical research database and resource. Launched in 2006, it aims to gather detailed health data of people’s bodies to support research into the causes, prevention and treatment of diseases.
Between 2006 and 2010 it had recruited 500,000 volunteers between the ages of 40 and 69 to take part in its research. These volunteers completed baseline assessments, helping the project to build a detailed profile of each participant’s health, lifestyle and biology.
In 2014, UK Biobank started piloting an imaging project in which a person’s entire body would be scanned.
Following the pilot’s success, the main phase of the project kicked off in 2016. It aimed to invite 100,000 of UK Biobank’s 500,000 volunteers to have their bodies scanned in a five-hour appointment using advanced imaging techniques.
This included magnetic resonance (MR) images of the brain, heart and...