With funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), Taiwan, two SINAPSE image analysis experts recently visited National Taiwan University in Taipei to initiate an international research collaboration on diffusion MRI data analysis.

Dr Gordon Waiter from the University of Aberdeen and Dr David Dickie from the University of Edinburgh traveled to Taipei at the end of May 2016 to visit the lab of Professor Wen-Yih Isaac Tseng, who leads a group developing the TBAA (Tract Based Automatic Analysis) technique for analysis of white matter fibre connections in the brain. They also visited the lab of Dr Joshua Goh, a colleague and collaborator of Prof Tseng, whose interests include applying similar imaging protocols across geopolitical contexts to examine how brain development and ageing might differ. In addition to learning about the imaging research activities at National Taiwan University during their visit, Dr Waiter and Dr Dickie were able to present on their SINAPSE research projects and help with applying the TBAA technique to existing data sets from Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Dr David Dickie	Dr Gordon Waiter

Dr Waiter delivered an invited talk at the 2016 SINAPSE Annual Scientific Meeting on 17 June, reporting on the visit to Taiwan and plans to move forward with collaborative projects on diffusion MRI and cross-cultural cognitive ageing. Both Dr Waiter and Dr Dickie enjoyed productive scientific discussions during their visit with the Taipei research groups and are grateful to their hosts for the wonderful hospitality they were shown. We all look forward to further development of this research partnership and we hope to welcome the researchers from Taiwan for a return exchange visit to SINAPSE groups in Scotland.

Any SINAPSE members interested in learning more about opportunities to join or contribute data to this collaboration are welcome to contact Dr Waiter at g.waiter@abdn.ac.uk