0000000000548628
AUTHOR
Hilga Zimmermann
The impact of isolated lesions on white-matter fiber tracts in multiple sclerosis patients
Infratentorial lesions have been assigned an equivalent weighting to supratentorial plaques in the new McDonald criteria for diagnosing multiple sclerosis. Moreover, their presence has been shown to have prognostic value for disability. However, their spatial distribution and impact on network damage is not well understood. As a preliminary step in this study, we mapped the overall infratentorial lesion pattern in relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis patients (N = 317) using MRI, finding the pons (lesion density, 14.25/cm3) and peduncles (13.38/cm3) to be predilection sites for infratentorial lesions. Based on these results, 118 fiber bundles from 15 healthy controls and a subgroup of 23 …
Flow cytometric analysis of T cell/monocyte ratio in clinically isolated syndrome identifies patients at risk of rapid disease progression.
Background: Multiple sclerosis is a chronic inflammatory central nervous system disease diagnosed by clinical presentation and characteristic magnetic resonance imaging findings. The role of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis has been emphasized in particular in the context of differential diagnosis in patients with a first episode suggestive of multiple sclerosis. Objective: We investigated here the potential additional value of analysis of CSF cellularity by fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) in the setting of a routine diagnostic work-up in our inpatient clinic. Methods: CSF cells from back-up samples from patients with suspected chronic inflammatory central nervous system disord…
Assessment of cortical damage in early multiple sclerosis with quantitative T 2 relaxometry
T2 relaxation time is a quantitative MRI in vivo surrogate of cerebral tissue damage in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Cortical T2 prolongation is a known feature in later disease stages, but has not been demonstrated in the cortical normal appearing gray matter (NAGM) in early MS. This study centers on the quantitative evaluation of the tissue parameter T2 in cortical NAGM in a collective of early MS and clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) patients, hypothesizing that T2 prolongation is already present at early disease stages and variable over space, in line with global and focal inflammatory processes in MS. Additionally, magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) mapping was performed for furt…
Quantitative T 1 and proton density mapping with direct calculation of radiofrequency coil transmit and receive profiles from two-point variable flip angle data
Quantitative T1 mapping of brain tissue is frequently based on the variable flip angle (VFA) method, acquiring spoiled gradient echo (GE) datasets at different excitation angles. However, accurate T1 calculation requires a knowledge of the sensitivity profile B1 of the radiofrequency (RF) transmit coil. For an additional derivation of proton density (PD) maps, the receive coil sensitivity profile (RP) must also be known. Mapping of B1 and RP increases the experiment duration, which may be critical when investigating patients. In this work, a method is presented for the direct calculation of B1 and RP from VFA data. Thus, quantitative maps of T1 , PD, B1 and RP can be obtained from only two …