PPMI - Consulting Support for T1 Standardization Sub-study

PPMI is an observational, multi‐center study with the goal of collecting clinical and imaging data and biologic samples, that can be used by scientists to establish markers of disease progression in PD. Although the main mission of PPMI study is to identify one or more biomarkers of Parkinson’s disease (PD) progression, it is notable that 2 of 3 specific aims focus on quality and standardization in acquiring the data. Furthermore, detailed manuals are available on the PPMI website specifying standards for all clinical, imaging and biological data acquisition. This type of standardization is absolutely necessary in order to realize the advantage of these types of multi-site studies by combining data from different sites. Study Aims: 1. Develop a comprehensive and uniformly acquired clinical/imaging dataset with correlated biological samples that can be used in biomarker verification studies 2. Establish standardized protocols for acquisition, transfer and analysis of clinical and imaging data and biological samples that can be used by the research community 3. Investigate existing biomarkers and identify new clinical, imaging and biological markers to determine interval changes in these markers