Abstract

In recent years, the UK Biobank study has scanned over 40,000 participants' brains and bodies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In addition, publicly available imaging genetic datasets also emerge from several other independent studies. We collected massive individual-level MRI data from different data resources, harmonized image processing procedures, and conducted biobank-scale genetic studies for various traits resulting from diverse imaging modalities. In this talk, we showcase novel clinical findings from our analyses, such as the shared genetic influences between brain and heart health, and the genetic overlaps with a wide range of clinical outcomes. We also discuss the statistical problems we encountered while analyzing these datasets and highlight future directions for research. This presentation is based on a series of joint works with the BIG-S2 lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.