Applications

Brain Tumors

Brain tumor microstructure acquired with our MDD protocols has been correlated to histopathology, the gold standard for diagnosis.  Several ongoing studies on grading, follow-up of treatment and surgical planning have been presented at conferences.

Multiple Sclerosis

Applying our MDD methods significantly improves the ability to capture white matter changes in subjects with MS.  The observed changes have been correlated to clinical scores, and highlight this tool as a potentially complementary MRI modality to track disease progression and treatment response.

Neuroscience

Our MDD methods have been used in the brain to study its microstructure in more detail and both changes in white and gray matter have been investigated. Applying tractography to our methods improves outcomes in areas where identification of tracts has previously been difficult, such as at fiber crossings.

Kidney

Using our software protocols for multidimensional diffusion MRI, researchers have been able to acquire novel information of the kidney microstructure, not accessible by conventional diffusion encoding.

Cardiac

Movement pose a great challenge for acquiring diffusion MRIs, and the beating of the heart has limited the use of these methods on this organ.  Using motion-compensated sequences when acquiring images, our software protocols for diffusion MRI has been successfully used for in-vivo imaging of the heart.

Clinical Implementation

Our software protocols for advanced diffusion MRI were initially developed for NMR microimaging systems.  To transfer the methods from these systems, there has been numerous studies of the necessary adaptations for clinical scanners, including sequence optimization to reduce scan times, as well as ways to minimize artifacts.