USC ADRC VCD

The Vascular Cohort Study (VCD) is a longitudinal cohort run and funded by the University of Southern California Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (USC ADRC). It asks how vascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, raised blood sugar and cholesterol affect the small vessels of the brain and the blood-brain barrier, and how that relates to the risk of Alzheimer's disease. The study combines advanced MRI with spinal fluid biomarkers. Its imaging is held as the VCD project on the LONI Image and Data Archive (IDA), which links back to the USC ADRC study page. Access goes through the USC ADRC application on the IDA: applicants accept the USC ADRC data use agreement and the ADRC Data and Publications Committee reviews each request.

Composition

The study enrolls adults over 60 with normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment, chosen to span low, medium and high cardiovascular risk based on blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar. Participants have yearly visits with the ADRC Clinical Core. A 2023 overview of the IDA lists the VCD project with 186 subjects from 2 institutions and deposits from 2015 onward. No breakdown by sex, age or cognitive status of the archived cohort is published.

Acquisition

A 2025 methods paper curated dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI from the IDA for the VCD cohort together with a second USC cohort (PPG). It reports that all USC scans were acquired at 3T at the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, partly on a GE Signa HDxt and otherwise on a Siemens Prisma. The DCE protocol used variable flip angle T1 mapping followed by a dynamic T1-weighted 3D VIBE series angled to cover the temporal lobe, with a gadolinium agent given after a short baseline. That paper does not separate the two USC cohorts, so the scanner split for VCD alone is unknown. Other MRI sequences are not described in a public source.

Known limitations

No data descriptor exists. The only published count is the IDA overview, which may not reflect later deposits. The scanner and protocol details above cover the VCD and PPG cohorts together.