Skip to content
Open Imaging Index
MRI Brain

TOPSY 7T psychosis cohort

Tracking Outcomes in Psychosis (TOPSY), 7 T MRI and MRS study of untreated first-episode psychosis, Western University

Longitudinal 7 T brain MRI (MP2RAGE, diffusion, resting fMRI, anterior cingulate MR spectroscopy) of people with untreated first-episode psychosis, established schizophrenia and healthy controls from London, Ontario. The images are not publicly released.

Go to dataset Edit Report

Overview

TOPSY (Tracking Outcomes in Psychosis) is a longitudinal ultra-high-field MRI study run at Western University and the Lawson and Robarts research institutes in London, Ontario, led by Lena Palaniyappan. It recruits people referred to the local Prevention and Early Intervention Program for Psychoses, most of them scanned within days of first contact and before antipsychotic treatment had taken hold, together with people with established schizophrenia and matched healthy controls. Its aims are to relate glutamate and glutathione, white matter, thought disorder and later outcome. The images have not been released publicly.

Composition

The registered protocol plans first-episode, clinical high-risk and established-illness patients plus controls. The diffusion analysis by Van Dyken et al. (2024) used 112 participants after exclusions: 58 with untreated first-episode schizophrenia spectrum psychosis, 17 with established schizophrenia and 37 controls, aged about 22 to 29 on average by group. Before that, 17 people did not complete the protocol, one was dropped for data quality and four first-episode patients with mood disorders were left out. Dempster et al. (2020) analysed baseline spectroscopy in 26 first-episode patients and 27 controls. First-episode patients were planned to be rescanned during follow-up.

Acquisition

Scans used a head-only Siemens 7 T scanner at the Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping, Western University, described in 2020 with an 8-channel transmit, 32-channel receive head coil and in 2024 as a MAGNETOM Plus. The protocol lasts about 75 minutes and includes 0.75 mm MP2RAGE, diffusion MRI at 2 mm with 64 directions in two phase-encoding directions, resting-state fMRI, myelin-sensitive imaging and single-voxel semi-LASER proton spectroscopy (TE 100 ms) of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.

Annotations

There are no image labels. Each participant has a consensus DSM-5 diagnosis, PANSS-8 symptom ratings, functioning scores (SOFAS), substance use measures and, for patients, time to treatment response and follow-up outcomes.

Known limitations

  • The images are not public. PsychosisBank shares only speech recordings, transcripts and clinical scores from part of the cohort, to approved non-commercial researchers.
  • Patient groups are mostly male (48 of 58 first-episode patients in the diffusion sample).
  • Some patients had a few days of antipsychotic exposure before the scan.
  • Published papers use different subsets, so counts differ between them.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 112 subjects.

Sex

  • Male 86 77%
  • Female 26 23%

Contrast combinations

How many subjects have exactly each set of contrasts.

MP2RAGEdwiSubjects with exactly this set
112

Contrast / sequence

subjects, values can overlap

  • MP2RAGE 112 100%
  • Diffusion-weighted 112 100%

Condition

subjects, values can overlap

  • Psychotic disorder 58 52%
  • Healthy control 37 33%
  • Schizophrenia 17 15%

Scanner vendor

subjects

  • Siemens Healthineers 112 100%

Field strength

subjects

  • 7 T 112 100%

Country

subjects

  • Canada 112 100%

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

Access
On request

Ask the authors or the data holder. No published process or terms, and access is at their discretion

The ClinicalTrials.gov record states that individual participant data will not be shared. The speech recordings, transcripts and clinical scores of part of the cohort are in the PsychosisBank TOPSY corpus, open to members approved by the DISCOURSE Consortium for non-commercial research. That corpus lists audio as its media; its page says the 7 T MRI data also exist but publishes no route to the images, and refers questions to the study lead.

Access page

No published license or data use terms

The data holder has published no license and no data use terms. Any use, sharing or commercial right has to be agreed with the data holder, and nothing can be assumed to be allowed. Default copyright and data protection law still apply.

No license or data use terms for the MRI data are published on the trial record, in the papers or on the PsychosisBank page.

Original license text Checked 2026-10-08

What you can do

  • Commercial use Not stated
  • Not stated
  • Train ML models Not stated
  • Create derived data Not stated
  • Publish results Not stated

What you can share

  • Share the data Not stated
  • Share derived data Not stated
  • Share trained models Not stated

What you must do

  • Cite or credit Not stated
  • Share alike Not stated
  • Sign an agreement Not stated
  • Ethics approval Not stated
  • Manuscript review Not stated
  • Release code Not stated
  • Return results Not stated
  • Delete after use Not stated

Limits

  • No re-identification Not stated
  • Location limits Not stated

Citation

Dempster K, Jeon P, MacKinley M, Williamson P, Théberge J, Palaniyappan L. Early treatment response in first episode psychosis: a 7-T magnetic resonance spectroscopic study of glutathione and glutamate. Molecular Psychiatry 25, 1640-1650 (2020). doi:10.1038/s41380-020-0704-x

All numbers

Every number on this page, as stored in stats.csv, with its source.

MeasureBreakdownValueSource
Subjectstotal
subjects with usable 7 T T1w and diffusion scans after exclusions; a larger number were scanned
112vandyken2024
Abstract and Table 1
Subjectscondition=psychotic_disorder
untreated first-episode psychosis with a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis
58vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectscondition=schizophrenia
established-illness group only; first-episode patients diagnosed with schizophrenia are counted under psychotic disorder
17vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectscondition=healthy 37vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectssex=male
sum of 24 controls, 48 first-episode and 14 established-illness men; the three groups are disjoint and complete
86vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectssex=female
sum of 13 controls, 10 first-episode and 3 established-illness women; the three groups are disjoint and complete
26vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectscondition=healthy;sex=male 24vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectscondition=healthy;sex=female 13vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectscondition=psychotic_disorder;sex=male 48vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectscondition=psychotic_disorder;sex=female 10vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectscondition=schizophrenia;sex=male 14vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectscondition=schizophrenia;sex=female 3vandyken2024
Table 1
Subjectscontrast=MP2RAGE
0.75 mm isotropic MP2RAGE T1w
112vandyken2024
Methods (TOPSY Dataset)
Subjectscontrast=dwi
2 mm isotropic, 64 directions at b = 1000 in AP and PA
112vandyken2024
Methods (TOPSY Dataset)
Subjectscontrast_set=dwi+MP2RAGE
contrasts analysed in this paper only
112vandyken2024
Methods (TOPSY Dataset)
Subjectsfield_strength=7 112vandyken2024
Methods (TOPSY Dataset)
Subjectsvendor=siemens
Siemens MAGNETOM Plus 7 T head-only scanner
112vandyken2024
Methods (TOPSY Dataset)
Subjectscountry=CA
London, Ontario
112vandyken2024
Methods (TOPSY Dataset)
Mean agecondition=healthy 21.7vandyken2024
Table 1
Age SDcondition=healthy 3.5vandyken2024
Table 1
Mean agecondition=psychotic_disorder 22.8vandyken2024
Table 1
Age SDcondition=psychotic_disorder 4.6vandyken2024
Table 1
Mean agecondition=schizophrenia 28.8vandyken2024
Table 1
Age SDcondition=schizophrenia 7.5vandyken2024
Table 1

Sources

The keys used in the table above.