SOURCES SOUGHT
B -- Linking function and structure: The relationship between brain activity and white matter integrity.
- Notice Date
- 7/24/2013
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 611310
— Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, 6001 Executive Boulevard, Room 4211 - MSC 9559, Bethesda, Maryland, 20892, United States
- ZIP Code
- 20892
- Solicitation Number
- SOSO3005952
- Point of Contact
- Mario D. Gray, Phone: 3014352238
- E-Mail Address
-
Mario.Gray@nih.hhs.gov
(Mario.Gray@nih.hhs.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- I. Introduction and Purpose: This is a ‘Notice for Sources Sought' for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 10-Market Research, and, is supplemented with additional information. This is not a solicitation and request for proposals, proposal abstracts, and quotations. This is not an invitation for bids. This Government Issuing Agency and Contracting Office, on behalf of the Government Requiring Agency, seeks to obtain information regarding the interest and capability of any qualified business source to successfully meet the Government's requirements described in this notice. II. Business Interest and Capability: The purpose of this ‘Sources Sought Notice' is to allow any interested and capable business to identify itself and its capabilities. Thus, the Government is seeking capability statements from capable businesses including, but not limited to, the following types: 8(a), Veteran-Owned Small Business, Services-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, Historically Underutilized Business Zone Small Business, Small Disadvantaged Business, Women-Owned Small Business and Large Business. A business shall use its capability statement to demonstrate that: 1. The business possesses the capabilities to successfully meet the Government's requirements described in this notice; and, 2. The business is competitive in terms of quality, delivery, and market prices. Based on the business responses received, or not received, to this notice, the Government's requirements may be solicited as a 100% Full-and-Open Competition or a type of set-aside. III. Background: Although age-related changes associated with brain function and white matter integrity have been relatively well-documented, investigations of the spatial co-localization and temporal sequences of such associations are just becoming feasible. The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) Neuroimaging Cohort has a two decade record of structural, white matter, and functional (via positron emission tomography, PET) data. Over the last several years, new high resolution resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scans have been added to the BLSA MRI imaging protocol to accompany the ongoing collection of modern diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) sequences. Together, these imaging sequences provide new avenues for mapping human brain function, including investigation of the functional connectivity and white matter integrity to better understand how networks of brain activity underlying cognitive processing change with aging and disease. The purpose of this contract is to provide the Government with state-of-the art statistical approaches and analysis of white matter correlates of alterations in functional connectivity as well as functional connectivity correlates of white matter alterations, both of which are integral to mapping of human brain function. Neuroimaging-derived biomarkers based on these imaging data promise to enable earlier and more effective intervention. Notably, multivariate models that include cardiovascular, genetic, and image-based risk factors are showing increasing success at predicting disease onset and progression. Current analytic tools for neuroimaging do not directly assess the temporal causality (even in the weak "Granger" sense) or longitudinal interdependence between complex factors with regional impacts in the brain. New inference models from the statistical community are beginning to be applied in specialized contexts, but have not been adapted for use within a general purpose framework. This Contract shall build upon previous work to create and evaluate a tool for multimodal data analyses by incorporating new statistical advances in causal modeling into the general linear model framework. The contract shall require the development, validation and implementation of calibration techniques to address data acquisition changes over the course of the two decade long BLSA study. The Contractor shall develop and apply techniques to assess relationships between structural, functional, and quantitative (diffusion) BLSA imaging data, allowing LBN investigators to investigate how brain-behavior associations in aging are modulated by cardiovascular, metabolic, inflammatory, and genetic risk factors. IV. Scope: - The Contractor shall extend the development of pipelines for imaging processing and new statistical approaches, including massively univariate analyses, to the combined rs-fMRI and DTI data. - The Contractor shall provide the government with pre-processed imaging data and statistical analyses of the combined rs-fMRI and DTI data. - The Contractor shall oversee the installation and implementation of software for specialized image analysis of BLSA images. - The Contractor shall retrieve all data from the NIA servers via encrypted "secure shell (ssh)" file transfer. These data shall include BLSA sessions prior to December 31, 2013. Approximately 891 sessions of 3T MRI and 2136 sessions at 1.5T MRI have been acquired through 4/22/2013; approximately 200 additional 3T MRI sessions are anticipated through December 31, 2013. - The Contractor shall provide processed data (e.g., connectivity maps, anisotropy maps, etc.) via a password protected web-based user interface. The desired model designs shall be coordinated between the LBN, NIA and the Contractor, and the Contractor shall compute the results of these models. The Contractor shall send statistical results (t-values, etc.) via e-mail and/or password restricted file transfer modalities. The Contractor shall also oversee installation and implementation of specific aspects of software necessary to view and interpret data at the LBN/NIA. V. Work Requirements and Task Description: The business shall demonstrate detailed knowledge, skill and abilities regarding the work requirements as follows: The business shall provide the service according to the work requirements as follows: 1. Retrieve data and co-register all image data into a common coordinate system. The Contractor shall coordinate with the NIA to ensure that a consistent common imaging reference space is used across projects. 2. Apply image processing tools developed and validated under a prior contract. a. Define gray matter regions of interest: Targeted regions include the Hippocampus, Posterior Cingulate, Precuneus, and Medial Frontal cortex. b. DTI Pre-processing: The Contractor shall perform and provide the Government with pre-processed image data, yielding fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), principal eigenvector (v1), and tensor (D) images for each subject. The Contractor shall use the defined gray matter regions of interest for rs-fMRI analysis based on structural data. c. Define white matter tracts: The FA maps for each subject shall be labeled with a white matter atlas (i.e., the Johns Hopkins "Eve" atlas). d. rs-fMRI Pre-processing: Pre-processing shall yield functional connectivity maps for each gray matter and white matter region of interest. e. Region of Interest Analysis: The Contractor shall generate and provide to the LBN, NIA a table of means and standard deviations of rs-fMRI, FA, and MD for all regions of interest. f. Implement mass-univariate temporal modeling: The Contractor shall work with the LBN/NIA team and their collaborators to select the most promising temporal association inference models (e.g., "causal") and implement this approach in the context of the Biological Parametric Mapping (BPM) toolbox. g. Characterize temporal inference in simulation: The Contractors shall perform data-driven simulations to verify that the inference method empirically performs according to theoretical predictions and is compatible with standard approaches for multiple comparisons corrections (e.g., false discovery rate [FDR]). h. Apply multi-modal temporal inference to BLSA 1.5T/3T cohort: The Contractor shall work with LBN investigators to execute structural-functional-covariate analysis in the form of a general linear model (GLM, voxelwise model of the form: Y=β X) where both the regressors and the regressands may be longitudinally sampled imaging variables. The temporal relationships between sequenced regressors and regressands shall be assessed. Additional non-imaging data may be provided for each subject in the form of an Excel document. These shall be run as additional regressors. i. Scanner calibration: The Contractor shall develop and evaluate strategies for scanner calibration/correction, including modeling scanner changes as nuisance variables and using image preprocessing corrections. 3. Support method translation to NIA intramural researchers: The Contractor shall provide LBN, NIA with documentation of methods, including user manuals, and assist with installation and implementation of software for LBN use. The Contractor shall document methodological contributions in the form of peer-reviewed publications. VI. Period of Performance: Base Year: 9/30/2013 - 9/29/2014 Option Year 1: 9/30/2014 - 9/29/2015 Option Year 2: 9/30/2015 - 9/29/2016 Option Year 3: 9/30/2016 - 9/29/2017 Option Year 4: 9/30/2017 - 9/29/2018 VII. Government Provided Data: The Government shall provide de-identified BLSA MRI imaging data to the Contractor and associated metadata necessary for analyses, such as sex, age, cognitive status, health variables. VIII. Response: Any interested and capable business shall submit its capabilities statement tailored to this ‘Sources Sought Notice'. The capabilities statement shall clearly define the interested business' capabilities using an Adobe PDF or Microsoft Office document which limited to 15 pages total. Any interested and capable business shall ensure that its response is accurate, complete, and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to assess the business' capabilities. The interested business' capabilities statement shall include the interested business' accurate and complete DUNS Number, Legal Business Name, "Doing Business as Name", Physical Address, Point of Contact Information, applicable North American Industry Classification System Code, Type of Business, and Business Size. Responses shall be submitted ONLY to Mario.Gray@nih.hhs.gov by the closing date of this ‘Sources Sought Notice'. IX. Legal Considerations: The Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of a response or to provide feedback to a response to this ‘Sources Sought Notice". This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or order to a respondent to this notice or pay for the information provided by a respondent to this notice. A respondent whom provides classified, confidential, proprietary, or/and sensitive information, does so entirely at its own risk and without the Government being subject to liability. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by any respondent for any purpose the Government deems appropriate and lawful. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by any respondent for any later announcement, notice, solicitation or/and synopsis.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/HHS/NIH/NIDA-01/SOSO3005952/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: Baltimore, Maine, 21224, United States
- Zip Code: 21224
- Zip Code: 21224
- Record
- SN03125281-W 20130726/130724234821-98723f7bd914570332430b623652bc9d (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
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