Human Organ Atlas Hub (HOAHub)

Human Organ Atlas Hub (HOAHub)

HOAHub aims to create a physical and virtual Hub which uses the disruptive Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Imaging (HiP-CT) technique to scan whole human organs with local cellular resolution, producing a “Human Organ Atlas (HOA) in Health, Ageing and Disease”.

It will: 1. Bridge clinical imaging (radiology, millimetre scale) to molecular modalities (nanometre scale), providing unprecedented insights into our bodies in health, ageing and disease, helping cure or mitigate diseases from neuro-degeneration to musculoskeletal disorders to cancer.  2. Bring together interdisciplinary groups to produce the novel experimental and computational technologies needed to analyse and interpret the scale-bridging data.
3. Enable the clinical impact of synchrotron imaging to be realised, by transforming HiP-CT into an efficient tool (from autopsy to beamtime to quantification). 4. Advance biological, computational and medical fields. 5. Provide anatomical training resources and a new Gold Standard for validating CT, MRI and 3D histology, inspiring a new generation of techniques and real-world clinical insights.

HOAHub consists of 7 interdisciplinary working groups to further develop the HiP-CT technique, address biological and biomedical challenges and propogate the technique to a wider community via training.

Introduction to the HOAHub vision and why we use HiP-CT by Prof. Peter D. Lee (UCL)

Introduction to the HiP-CT by Dr. Claire L. Walsh (UCL)

This project has been made possible by funding from:

• The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) — funding proposal MD-1252/MD-1290.
• The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a donor-advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
• The German Registry of COVID-19 Autopsies (DeRegCOVID), supported by the German Federal Ministry of Health.
• The Royal Academy of Engineering, UK.
• The Medical Research Council, UK.
• The Wellcome Trust, UK.
• Canadian Institute For Advanced Research, Canada.