Section: Application Domains

Multiple sclerosis

Over the past years, a discrepancy became apparent between clinical Multiple sclerosis (MS) classification describing on the one hand MS according to four different disease courses and, on the other hand, the description of two different disease stages (an early inflammatory and a subsequently neurodegenerative phase). It is to be expected that neuroimaging will play a critical role to define in vivo those four different MS lesion patterns. An in vivo distinction between the four MS lesion patterns, and also between early and late stages of MS will have an important impact in the future for a better understanding of the natural history of MS and even more for the appropriate selection and monitoring of drug treatment in MS patients. Since MRI has a low specificity for defining in more detail the pathological changes which could discriminate between the different lesion types, but a high sensitivity to detect focal and also widespread, diffuse pathology of the normal appearing white and grey matter, our major objective within this application domain is to define new neuroimaging markers for tracking the evolution of the pathology from high dimensional data (e.g. nD+t MRI). In addition, in order to complement MR neuroimaging data, we ambition to perform also cell labelling neuroimaging (e.g. MRI or PET) and to compare MR and PET data using standard and experimental MR contrast agents and radiolabeled PET tracers for activated microglia (e.g. USPIO or PK 11195). The goal is to define and develop, for routine purposes, cell specific and also quantitative imaging markers for the improved in vivo characterization of MS pathology.