DIRECT Phase II
Data Sharing of the Phase II from the DIRECT Consortium
Preprocessed resting-state fMRI time series and structural MRI measures of people with major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and healthy controls, pooled for transdiagnostic mega-analyses; raw scans are not included. Unzipping needs a signed agreement.
Overview
DIRECT Phase II is the second data release of the Depression Imaging REsearch ConsorTium (DIRECT), a group of Chinese research sites founded in 2017 to pool brain imaging for psychiatric research. It follows REST-meta-MDD, which shared only region-level resting-state fMRI indices. Phase II moves to voxel- and vertex-level data processed with the surface-based DPABISurf pipeline, and it adds patients with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia so that the three disorders can be compared directly. The release lives on Science Data Bank and is described on the R-fMRI Maps Project page of the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Raw scans are not part of it.
Composition
The release holds 3520 participants: 1660 patients with major depressive disorder and 1341 healthy controls from 23 cohorts, plus 205 patients with bipolar disorder and 314 with schizophrenia. The depression and control cohorts are described in the supplement of Chen et al. (2025), the bipolar and schizophrenia additions in Wang et al. (2026). Sex, age and per-site counts are not given on the public pages and are left out here.
Acquisition
All resting-state fMRI and structural MRI were preprocessed with DPABISurf, and researchers at each site were trained by the consortium to harmonize processing and quality control. Shared outputs are voxel- and vertex-level BOLD time series and measures derived from structural MRI. Scanner models and imaging parameters per cohort are listed in the supplement of Chen et al. (2025), which is not openly accessible, so they are not recorded here.
Annotations
There are no image labels. Standardized phenotypic data with the diagnostic group come with the signed agreement.
Known limitations
Only derivatives of one fixed pipeline are available. The cohorts are retrospective and scanned with different protocols, and all sites are in China. The archives are about 2 TB and download openly, but they stay encrypted until the agreement is signed, and users must send an annual progress report.
Cohort
Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 3,520 subjects.
Contrast / sequence
Groups can overlap
- BOLD fMRI 3,520 100%
Item 1 in Data Use Agreement of DIRECT Phase II Intermediate Results (V2)
Condition
Groups can overlap
- Major depressive disorder 1,660 47%
- Healthy control 1,341 38%
- Schizophrenia 314 9%
- Bipolar disorder 205 6%
Abstract in Chen et al. 2025, Subgenual anterior cingulate cortex functional connectivity abnormalities in depression, Science Bulletin (PubMed 40628558); Description, Key Features in Science Data Bank record 10.57760/sciencedb.psych.00689 and its DataCite metadata (V4)
License and access
Our reading of the license, not legal advice. Before you use the data, read the original license and confirm that your use is allowed. We take no responsibility for how you use a dataset. Full disclaimer
Sign a data use agreement, often reviewed by the provider
The archives download from Science Data Bank (FTP is recommended for the size), but they are encrypted. The unzip password and the phenotypic information are sent after a scanned, signed copy of the data use agreement is emailed to rfmrilab@gmail.com. Until January 1, 2026 access was coordinated through letters of intent; since then sharing is unrestricted for qualified researchers.
Different parts of the data carry different licenses. The summary on the right shows the most restrictive answer per rule.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Share the unchanged data with credit for non-commercial purposes. You may not share anything derived from it, and Creative Commons advises against training models on it.
What you can do
- No
- Not stated
- No
- Conditional
- Yes
What you can share
- Conditional
- No
- No
What you must do
- Yes
- Share alike No
- No
- No
- Manuscript review No
- Release code No
- Return results No
- Delete after use No
Limits
- No
- Location limits No
Data Use Agreement of DIRECT Phase II Intermediate Results from the DIRECT Consortium
A principal investigator signs the agreement and emails it to receive the unzip password and phenotypic data. Any analysis is allowed within ethical limits, but the data and phenotypes may not be passed to third parties, an annual progress report is due, and publications must cite the data papers and list the DIRECT Consortium as an author.
What you can do
- Not stated
- Not stated
- Conditional
- Not stated
- Conditional
What you can share
- No
- Not stated
- Share trained models Not stated
What you must do
- Yes
- Share alike No
- Yes
- No
- Manuscript review No
- Release code No
- Conditional
- Delete after use No
Limits
- No
- No
Citation
Chen X, Lu B, Wang YW, et al. Subgenual anterior cingulate cortex functional connectivity abnormalities in depression: insights from brain imaging big data and precision-guided personalized intervention via transcranial magnetic stimulation. Sci Bull (Beijing) 70:2676-2690 (2025). doi:10.1016/j.scib.2025.05.042. Wang ZH, Chen X, Lu B, et al. Cross-subject decoding of internal mental states using predictive time-series modeling. Sci Bull (Beijing) (2026). doi:10.1016/j.scib.2026.05.060. Chen X, Lu B, Li HX, et al. The DIRECT consortium and the REST-meta-MDD project: towards neuroimaging biomarkers of major depressive disorder. Psychoradiology 2(1):32-42 (2022). doi:10.1093/psyrad/kkac005
Sources
Every number on this page comes from one of these documents. Each chart names the table or page it is taken from. The raw numbers are in stats.csv.
- Science Data Bank record 10.57760/sciencedb.psych.00689 and its DataCite metadata (V4) website
- Data Sharing of the Phase II from the DIRECT Consortium, rfmri.org page website
- Data Use Agreement of DIRECT Phase II Intermediate Results (V2) website
- Chen et al. 2025, Subgenual anterior cingulate cortex functional connectivity abnormalities in depression, Science Bulletin (PubMed 40628558) paper