Neuroimaging Analysis for Clinical Translation

The Neuroimaging Analysis for Clinical Translation (N-ACT, pronounced “enact”) research group develops and evaluates neuroimaging analysis methods that bridge large-scale population imaging with real-world clinical data to support clinical research and translation into clinical practice. The group designs image-analysis tools and workflows that prioritise robustness, interpretability, and reproducibility, with particular emphasis on MRI and related modalities.

N-ACT is part of the NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre (OH-BRC), contributing to research in dementia and brain technologies. Our work includes adapting neuroimaging methods developed in large-scale research studies, such as UK Biobank, for use in clinical research. We contribute the imaging methodology underpinning the Oxford Brain Health Clinic, helping integrate advances in MRI research into memory-clinic assessments while creating opportunities to evaluate new methods within a research-clinical pathway. We also develop harmonisation approaches that enable reliable comparison of imaging data across studies, sites and scanners. 

Software and Open Resources. Beyond contributing to FSL, we develop, maintain, and share neuroimaging methods, software and imaging protocols to support reproducible clinical neuroimaging research:

• MRI acquisition protocols:
• Oxford Brain Health Clinic (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.6598035.);
• OxBAC-BIRAX Healthy Ageing (OHBA 3T, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.5287/ora-m8zr6j9mx, FMRIB 3T, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.5287/ora-gp7jnd7nk).

• Analysis pipelines:
• Oxford Brain Health Clinic MRI pipeline (https://git.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/open-science/analysis/brain-health-clinic-mri);
• C-MORE Brain MRI pipeline (https://git.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/open-science/analysis/c-more-brain-mri)

• Harmonisation methods:
• Diagnose Harmonise a tool to apply and evaluate harmonisation methods on neuroimaging datasets.
• 🧠 OHBM 2026 Educational Course. Data harmonization for neuroscientific research: Theory, challenges, and applications. Course material available here.