"Our ultimate goal for sharing the MRI data we collect is to make it public and available wherever possible. There are important reasons why not everything can be open access, but we want the data to be shared in a responsible way as openly and freely as possible according to the laws and practices in the various places," Olsen says.
Olsen notes that it is a challenge to share all data openly. Researchers can still perform analyses where data is not shared, but include the results of analyses carried out locally at each site in meta-analyses. The next step, however, is to carry out mega-analyses.
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"Mega-analyses would require sharing the data, and different parts of the world have differing practices for what's legal. A whole separate part of our work involves studying and creating solutions for access so that it will be easier for researchers to navigate that landscape. This is where NTNU Open and others come in with their expertise," Olsen says.
As things stand today, no one can be identified only from an MRI image of the brain. But Olsen believes that in this type of research we have to consider the theoretical possibility of this happening sometime in the future.
"You have to balance the risk with the possible benefits for patients and research," he says.
Reference: Olsen, A., Babikian, T., Bigler, E.D. et al. Toward a global and reproducible science for brain imaging in neurotrauma: the ENIGMA adult moderate/severe traumatic brain injury working group. Brain Imaging and Behavior (2020).
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