Quantitative neuroimaging measures of myelin in the healthy brain and in multiple sclerosis

Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques have been developed as imaging biomarkers, aiming to improve the specificity of MRI to underlying pathology compared to conventional weighted MRI. For assessing the integrity of white matter (WM), myelin, in particular, several techniques have...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human brain mapping 2019-05, Vol.40 (7), p.2104-2116
Main Authors: O'Muircheartaigh, Jonathan, Vavasour, Irene, Ljungberg, Emil, Li, David K. B., Rauscher, Alexander, Levesque, Victoria, Garren, Hideki, Clayton, David, Tam, Roger, Traboulsee, Anthony, Kolind, Shannon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biomarkers
Brain
Brain - diagnostic imaging
Brain - physiology
Female
Humans
individual differences
Lesions
Magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Magnetization
magnetization transfer ratio
Male
Median (statistics)
Medical imaging
Middle Aged
Multiple sclerosis
Multiple Sclerosis, Relapsing-Remitting - diagnostic imaging
Multiple Sclerosis, Relapsing-Remitting - physiopathology
Myelin
Myelin Sheath - physiology
myelin water imaging
Neuroimaging
Neuroimaging - methods
Neurology
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
quantitative MRI
relaxometry
Substantia alba
Tissues
Young Adult
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Summary:Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques have been developed as imaging biomarkers, aiming to improve the specificity of MRI to underlying pathology compared to conventional weighted MRI. For assessing the integrity of white matter (WM), myelin, in particular, several techniques have been proposed and investigated individually. However, comparisons between these methods are lacking. In this study, we compared four established myelin‐sensitive MRI techniques in 56 patients with relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) and 38 healthy controls. We used T2‐relaxation with combined GRadient And Spin Echoes (GRASE) to measure myelin water fraction (MWF‐G), multi‐component driven equilibrium single pulse observation of T1 and T2 (mcDESPOT) to measure MWF‐D, magnetization‐transfer imaging to measure magnetization‐transfer ratio (MTR), and T1 relaxation to measure quantitative T1 (qT1). Using voxelwise Spearman correlations, we tested the correspondence of methods throughout the brain. All four methods showed associations that varied across tissue types; the highest correlations were found between MWF‐D and qT1 (median ρ across tissue classes 0.8) and MWF‐G and MWF‐D (median ρ = 0.59). In eight WM tracts, all measures showed differences (p
ISSN:1065-9471
1097-0193
DOI:10.1002/hbm.24510