Project Information

About CLARiTI

The ADRC Consortium for Clarity in ADRD Research Through Imaging (CLARiTI) is a nationwide research initiative focused on advancing our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) through cutting edge brain imaging techniques. This initiative was developed over a 2-year planning process with input from leading experts from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), all NIH funded ADRC’s, and the ADRC Imaging Core Steering Committee. Through this collaboration, researchers identified a critical need: standardized PET and MRI imaging across ADRC sites. By integrating these protocols into ongoing research, CLARiTI is closing scientific gaps and accelerating discoveries that could lead to better diagnosis and treatment of dementia.

What is CLARiTI

CLARiTI is a multi-site observational study leveraging the well-established infrastructure of ADRCs across the country. These research centers have the expertise and resources to conduct high-quality neuroimaging studies, ensuring that data collected is reliable, standardized, and valuable to the broader scientific community.

The National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC) plays a key role in CLARiTI, managing study logistics, facilitating data collection, and supporting research sites with subawards for procedure costs and personnel.

Why CLARiTI?

Many cases of dementia involve multipe underlying causes, know as multi-etiology dementia (MED). This complexity is often overlooked in large research studies and clinical trials. Because most studies focus on single diseases, they may miss important insights into how different types of dementia interact.

ADRCs are uniquely positioned to fill this gap. They follow the largest cohort of individuals with MED, collecting critical clinical and autopsy data. However, neuroimaging in these participants has been limited and inconsistent. CLARiTI changes thats by bringing standardized imaging into the ADRC consortium, allowing researchers to better understand the biological markers of dementia.

How CLARiTI Addresses This Need

CLARiTI will leverage existing NACC infrastructure to accelerate and track MRI and PET image submissions from the ADRCs. Through the NACC Data Front Door researchers around the world will have access to MRI and PET scans and image analysis summary results. The NACC infrastructure is being designed to integrate case report forms, visual interpretations of images, and neuropathology reports. This pipeline will securely return Amyloid and Tau quantitative values processed by SCAN alongside Amyloid status determined from the CLARiTI Image Interpretation Core to the ADRCs. Workflows for Tau status are currently being developed by the CLARiTI Image Interpretation Core. The planned data flow infrastructure is shown in the figure below.

Additional study components include:The Image Interpretation Core will assess images through a hybrid quantitative-qualitative assessment, utilyzing expert visual readers.

The CLARiTI Return of Results Core will provide workflows for returning PET result status to individual sites, which may be helpful for sites that do not yet have workflows in place.
The CLARiTI Neuropathology Core and digital pathology resource will link imaging data with post-mortem brain tissue analysis
The CLARiTI Plasma Biomarker Core will build a bridge to future uniform plasma ADRD biomarker characterization in the ADRCs: Use context validation, future cost savings, and repository for discovery.
The CLARiTI Access Core will provide resources to the community and to sites related to the recruitment of under-studied research populations, including rural and individuals with low socio-economic status (SES).

Looking Ahead

With the planned 2,000 participants, CLARiTI will create an unparalleled dataset linking imaging, clinical assessments, and pathology findings. This initiative not only advances dementia research today but also lays the foundation for future breakthroughs, including the development of blood-based biomarkers that could make diagnosing ADRD easier and more accessible.

By fostering collaboration across research centers, CLARiTI is accelerating progress toward a clearer understanding of dementia.

CLARiTI is committed to sharing its data, images and biofluids and their derived values with qualified investigators. Indeed, a major purpose of the overall initiative and a stated goal of Aim 1 is to create and share the resource. The way that CLARiTI images and data are integrated into the overall ADRC data repository (the NACC Data Platform) and shared with Researchers everywhere is shown in the figure below.

The National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC) functions as the data coordinating center for CLARiTI. The overall approach is that broad consent will be obtained that authorizes sharing of the data via the NACC and SCAN/LONI repositories. The images and data and biospecimens collected on ADRC participants through CLARiTI immediately become part of, and integrated with, the national databases at NACC. In addition, copies of the images may remain local for use by the site in their local research.