neuGRID is the first project within the neuroscientific community to use the Grid technology.
Launched in 2008, neuGRID aims to establish an e-Infrastructure supplying neuroscientists with the most advanced ICT to help defeat neuro-degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer’s is the second most feared disease associated with aging, following cancer, according to the Alzheimer Society of Canada.

At the demonstration competition of the EGEE'09 conference in Barcelona, neuGRID has been showcasing preliminary results of its ongoing data challenge. As such, it has fed the grid with 6,300 magnetic resonance (MR) scans from more than 700 patients — a bit less than 200 images per patient — through an automated series of image processing algorithms.

 

This “pipeline” analyzed the cortical thickness of the brain (a measurement aligned with brain health) and its deterioration over time.

 

The images are from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (http://www.adni-info.org/) in the US, the largest public database of MR scans of patients with Alzheimer’s Disease (http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_what_is_alzheimers.asp) and a lesser condition termed Mild Cognitive Impairment (http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_mild_cognitive_impairment.asp).

Using the grid, neuGRID was able to process this dataset in about 10 days instead of 5 years on a single computer.
The competition was particularly interesting this year with all demonstrators invited to submit a short video introducing their demo – see:
http://www.youtube.com/enablinggrids.
neuGRID was honoured with the winning demo award for “neuGRID – A grid-brained infrastructure to understand and defeat brain diseases".