H2020Индивидуална стипендия2018–2020

MRI-STRUCTURE · MRI Signal To Recover Unique Cerebral TissUe Response to changEs

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2018-04-01 → 2020-03-31
Финансиране от ЕС: 158 122 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF-EF-ST

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Нова техника за магнитен резонанс се разработва, за да разбере точно кои части от мозъка са увредени – например миелинът или аксоните. Това ще помогне за по-точна диагностика и проследяване на развитието на неврологични и психични заболявания.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

MRI Signal To Recover Unique Cerebral TissUe Response to changEs

While several pathologies can affect the brain over the lifespan, all involving different kind of microstructural changes affecting specific tissue compartments like myelin, axons, glia cells or neurons, our ability to diagnose and monitor disease progression, as well as evaluate the efficacy of new therapies, is limited by the lack of specificity of current non-invasive imaging techniques. In other words, current diagnostic tools for looking at brain structure and function can tell us that there is a damage, but often they are not capable of telling us exactly which compartment is damaged. An instrument capable of increasing the specificity of our analysis when looking into the brain is expected to have a tremendous impact on how brain diseases are diagnosed and treated, with a huge benefit for our society. As a matter of fact, the proportion of the global burden of disease that is attributable to neurological, mental health, developmental and substance-use disorders, which is already really high, is expected to rise further in the near future due to the increase in life expectation. The project MRI-STRUCTURE (Magnetic Resonance Imaging Signal To Recover Unique Cerebral TissUe Response to changEs) aims at developing an innovative imaging technique, based on magnetic resonance, to look at different cell compartments in the brain, in vivo and non-invasively. To develop this framework, I took advantage of the possibility of decomposing the magnetic resonance signal measured in the brain into the contributions of the different cellular compartments. To validate it, I have used the rodent brain to induce a controlled tissue response similar to the reaction observed in different brain pathologies (inflammation, myelin and axonal damage). I then measured the change in the MRI images and compared it with post-mortem histological results, demonstrating that the MRI signal contains the fingerprints of specific cellular compartments, and that these contributions can be teased apart. As a proof of concept of the utility of MRI-STRUCTURE in clinics, I have adapted the imaging protocol to a human scanner to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. To facilitate even further the adoption of advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques in hospitals, I have worked with the startup QMENTA to make the analysis platform available in the cloud in a streamlined and easily accessible fashion. All in all, this innovative brain imaging approach is expected to impact on our ability to fight neurodegenerative and inflammatory diseases, by achieving early diagnosis, personalized monitoring of the disease progression and of the efficacy of new therapies.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

MRI-STRUCTURE is an innovative non-invasive imaging framework that will provide access to unexplored microstructural information in brain, targeting the scarcity of microstructural models able to extract meaningful biomarkers from the diffusion MRI signal in grey matter (GM). It is based on a synergy between different approaches: simulations, modeling, acquisition and analysis of real data, implementation of rodent model of brain insults, translation to human. The final aim of the project is to increase our knowledge of brain structure in health and disease, with a special focus on the themes of neuroinflammation, demyelination and axon degeneration. These physiological processes are interplaying phenomena involved in the brain’s reaction to different stimuli, which have recently become a hot topic in brain research, due to their involvement in the pathogenesis of several neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. The specific objectives of MRI-STRUCTURE are: 1) to develop a new biophysical model of diffusion MRI in GM, capturing salient aspects of its microstructure; 2) to validate the model by triggering selective activation of different compartments in selected brain areas using established models of inflammation, demyelination and degeneration in rats; 3) to translate this approach to human brain in vivo in a cohort of healthy volunteers (during a secondment in CUBRIC, one of the European hubs for neuroimaging); and 4) to disseminate the framework to a wide clinical audience through a secondment in the startup Mint Labs, and explore its commercial applicability. An instrument with capacity to characterize relevant aspects of tissue microstructure in vivo and noninvasively is expected to have a tremendous impact on our knowledge of the pathophysiology of many brain pathologies, ultimately leading to early diagnosis, better (e.g., personalised) monitoring of the disease course and of the efficacy of new therapies.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS · MadridКоординаторИспания