Project: Renal MRI standardization to improve personalised management of CKD patients

Acronym	RESPECT (Reference Number: ERAPERMED2020-326)
Project Topic	More than 10% of the world’s population have chronic kidney disease (CKD), and its prevalence is increasing. CKD represents a global health burden with high economic cost. CKD patients exhibit progressive disease, demonstrating a failure of current therapies, and an alarming number of clinical trials have failed. Better methods are urgently needed for earlier diagnosis and improved patient stratification, targeted treatment and monitoring. Renal multiparametric Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has emerged as a promising non-invasive technique for characterisation of renal physiology and pathophysiology. However current methodological differences across studies hinder reliable comparisons. Widely accepted normative values are not available, and additional evidence for clinical validity and utility of renal MRI is required. RESPECT addresses these unmet needs with a multinational, multidisciplinary and intersectoral project that will set up a scalable standardised renal MRI infrastructure allowing multicentre clinical research. This is fundamental for its ultimate transfer to clinical practice for personalised medicine. RESPECT aims: 1) to develop a standardised physiologically relevant multi-parametric renal MRI protocol for personalised CKD management, 2) to harmonise across MRI vendors and technically validate the standardised renal MRI protocol, 3) to set up an open-access cloud-based platform for renal MRI data sharing, quality control and processing, 4) to develop novel artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to automate renal MRI processing, 5) to provide preliminary cross-institutional evidence of renal MRI feasibility and utility in characterising and staging CKD, 6) to develop MRI data sharing guidelines ensuring ethics and confidentiality, and assess patient, health care and ethic professionals’ perspective on data sharing and the use of AI in image data processing.
Network	ERA PerMed
Call	3rd Joint Transnational Call for Proposals (2020)

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS	Coordinator	Italy
2	Aarhus University	Partner	Denmark
3	Heidelberg University	Partner	Germany
4	Clínica Universidad de Navarra	Partner	Spain
5	University of Nottingham	Partner	United Kingdom
6	Siemens SRL	Partner	Romania