IN A GROUNDBREAKING medical milestone, UK Biobank has completed the world’s largest whole-body imaging study, scanning 100,000 volunteers to uncover early signs of disease across the brain, heart, liver, bones, and more. The scale and depth of the project, collecting over one billion images, is enabling unprecedented insights into how our bodies age and develop disease, long before symptoms appear.
Since 2015, UK Biobank has been releasing imaging data in batches to approved researchers, combining it with decades of lifestyle, genetic, and clinical information from the same volunteers. This layered dataset now underpins more than 1,300 scientific publications and is already shaping clinical practice across the globe.
The 5-hour scan appointments captured over 12,000 images per person using advanced MRI, DEXA, and ultrasound techniques. This includes detailed views of organ structure and fat distribution, bone density, blood vessels, and soft tissue, enabling clinicians and scientists to identify hidden disease patterns in ways never before possible.
The impacts are wide-ranging and immediate. UK memory clinics now use UK Biobank-derived tools to enhance dementia diagnosis. In over 90 countries, clinicians use an AI model, trained on UK Biobank heart scans, to interpret cardiac imaging in under a second, freeing up time to focus on complex cases.
Beyond today’s clinical applications, the study is driving discovery science with impressive results. Researchers have developed tools to detect early-stage Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, predict the biological age of organs, and reveal how mental health may be linked to structural heart changes. Other findings include evidence that one to two alcoholic drinks a day can reduce brain volume, and that some people store fat in ways that raise, or lower, their risk for chronic disease, regardless of BMI.
A second phase is underway to re-scan 60,000 participants by 2029, providing a unique window into how diseases progress over time.
With all 100,000 imaging datasets expected to be available to researchers by the end of 2025, this initiative is poised to significantly advance our understanding of health and disease. By combining detailed imaging with genetic and lifestyle data, UK Biobank is helping researchers uncover early markers of disease, improve diagnostic tools, and explore new avenues for prevention and treatment across a range of conditions.
Reference
UK Biobank. Record-breaking human imaging project crosses the finish line: 100,000 volunteers provide science with most detailed look inside the body. 2025. Available at : https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/news/record-breaking-human-imaging-project-crosses-the-finish-line/. Last accessed: 18 July 2025.
