Framingham Heart Study (FHS)

The Framingham Heart Study (FHS) has followed residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, and their families since 1948 to learn which factors lead to heart disease and stroke. It is run by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) together with Boston University. Over the decades the study added imaging of the heart, vessels and brain to its regular examinations. Images are not public: echocardiograms and CT scans are released as a controlled-access dbGaP study (phs003593), and brain and cardiac MRI scans are available by proposal to the study itself. The main dbGaP study phs000007 holds the phenotype data, including measurements derived from the images, but no image files.

Composition

The dbGaP imaging study counts 15,448 consented subjects from six cohorts: the Original cohort (5,209 adults aged 30 to 62 at enrolment in 1948), the Offspring cohort (5,124 children of the Original cohort and their spouses, from 1971), the Third Generation (4,095 grandchildren, from 2002), 103 New Offspring Spouses, and the minority cohorts OMNI-1 (506) and OMNI-2 (410). Echocardiograms can be requested from Original cohort exams 18 to 32, Offspring exams 3 to 10, Third Generation, New Offspring Spouse and OMNI-2 exams 1 to 3, and OMNI-1 exams 1 to 5. CT images from one or two time points exist for 4,427 participants of the Offspring, Third Generation and OMNI cohorts. The Brain Aging Program holds brain MRI scans collected since 1999 and cardiac MRI scans from 2002 to 2006.

Acquisition

The parent study describes MRI of the brain, heart and aorta, CT of the heart and aorta, and echocardiography. Brain MRI is kept in its native DICOM form. The sources opened for this entry give no scanner models, field strengths or sequences.

Annotations

No image labels are described. Images link to decades of examination, laboratory, outcome and genetic data in phs000007.

Known limitations

Subject counts for echocardiography and MRI are not published on the access pages, so only the CT count and the consented total are given. Access to the dbGaP data requires a senior investigator, an approved request and local ethics approval; one consent group limits use to not-for-profit organizations. MRI requests go through a separate FHS review with fees.