Science & Research
“Imaging technologies”
The MRCE's mission includes, both, applied clinical research using state-of-the-art MR imaging technologies and ongoing development of those technologies. This translational approach within one institution ensures a fast transfer of promising new MR methods into the clinical environment.
The core MR technologies being developed at our center are:
- Proton MR Spectroscopy
- Phosphorus MR Spectroscopy
- Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer
- Sodium MR Imaging
- Relaxation (T1/T2/T2*)-mapping
- Susceptibility-weighted Imaging
- Functional MR Imaging
- Diffusion-weighted Imaging
- MR Fingerprinting
with a particular focus on method development at ultra-high magnetic field MR Scanners (i.e., 7 Tesla).
In Detail
Proton MR Spectroscopy
Proton MR Spectroscopy (1H-MRS) is a technique to quantify and map the distribution of various chemical compounds that contain hydrogen non-invasively including biomarkers for myelination, cell proliferation, energy metabolism, and osmoregulation as well as antioxidants, neurotransmitters, and specific lipid composition. Therefore, 1H-MRS can be used to study the pathogenesis of diseases or treatment response in the brain or other parts of the body such as the liver, heart, prostate or breast.
Phosphorous MR Spectroscopy
Phosphorous MR Spectroscopy (31P-MRS) is the better alternative to 1H-MRS, if only phosphorous-containing chemical compounds are investigated such as for investigations of static and dynamic changes in the major high-energy metabolites during rest or exercise. This is of particular importance for investigation of cell activity in various metabolic diseases assessed mostly in the skeletal muscles, heart, and the liver.
Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer
Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST) is related to MRS methods, but instead of directly detecting several chemical compounds at once –like in MRS– CEST provides an indirect measure of a specific chemical compound with much higher sensitivity and this significantly improved spatial resolution, but less quantitative. CEST offers imaging of surrogate markers for the concentration of a certain species of solute molecules in various tissues such as the brain, muscles, cartilage, and breast.
Sodium MR Imaging
Sodium MR Imaging (23Na-MRI) is a noninvasive method for mapping of the sodium concentration in different tissues. Sodium concentration is a sensitive biomarker for detecting changes in the composition of connective tissues, as well as in cellular physiology, osmoregulation and metabolism. 23Na-MRI can be used to study many different pathological processes or their response to treatment in cartilage, tendons, muscles, intervertebral discs, kidneys, brain or breast.
Relaxation (T1/T2/T2*)-mapping
Currently, the vast majority of clinically applied MR imaging methods provides only qualitative “weighted” images that may change substantially with the used hardware and software (parameters). Relaxation mapping methods such as the recently introduced MR Fingerprinting are aimed at assessing absolute physical (relaxation) properties in tissues, which are independent of the measurement methods and, thus, provide superior comparability between sites and to standardize the (diagnostic) evaluation of various pathologies.
Susceptibility-weighted Imaging
Susceptibility-Weighted Imaging (SWI) is a method for visualizing the veins in the brain and regions of the brain in which iron is deposited, particularly in neuropathologies such as Alzheimer's disease. In contrast to conventional MRI, which only uses the magnitude of the MR signal, SWI incorporates associated phase information, which is sensitivity to the presence of iron in tissue and blood vessels. Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping, or QSM, is an associated method which attempts to calculate the magnetic susceptibility of tissues from phase images.
Functional MR Imaging
Neurons in the brain fire when they are engaged in processing stimuli or performing a task. This leads to an increase in oxygen demand, and a local change in the concentration of deoxygenated hemoglobin. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) generates images of the brain every few seconds. The images are sensitive to changes in the amount of deoxyhaemoglobin, allowing localization of activated brain regions. fMRI is used in basic neuroscience to map brain regions and networks which are involved in processing different kinds of stimuli, for clinical studies, to examine brain function in various psycho- and neuropathologies, and in neurosurgery, to identify brain regions which have to be spared when resecting tumors.
Diffusion-weighted Imaging
Diffusion-weighted Imaging (DWI), Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), and related MR methods probe tissue properties on a microstructural-level via observing the (restricted) direction-dependent diffusion of water molecules in the presence of cellular barriers under normal and pathologic conditions. This allows not only the tracking of nerve and muscle fibers, but also the differentiation and delineation of cancers, which feature high cellular density.
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