Innovative MRI Techniques in Neuroimaging Approaches for Cerebrovascular Diseases and Vascular Cognitive Impairment.
Cognitive impairment and dementia are recognized as major threats to public health. Many studies have shown the important role played by challenges to the cerebral vasculature and the neurovascular unit. To investigate the structural and functional characteristics of the brain, MRI has proven an invaluable tool for visualizing the internal organs of patients and analyzing the parameters related to neuronal activation and blood flow in vivo. Different strategies of imaging can be combined to obtain various parameters: (i) measures of cortical and subcortical structures (cortical thickness, subcortical structures volume); (ii) evaluation of microstructural characteristics of the white matter (fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity); (iii) neuronal activation and synchronicity to identify functional networks across different regions (functional connectivity between specific regions, graph measures of specific nodes); and (iv) structure of the cerebral vasculature and its efficacy in irrorating the brain (main vessel diameter, cerebral perfusion). The high amount of data obtainable from multi-modal sources calls for methods of advanced analysis, like machine-learning algorithms that allow the discrimination of the most informative features, to comprehensively characterize the cerebrovascular network into specific and sensitive biomarkers. By using the same techniques of human imaging in pre-clinical research, we can also investigate the mechanisms underlying the pathophysiological alterations identified in patients by imaging, with the chance of looking for molecular mechanisms to recover the pathology or hamper its progression.
['Carnevale|Lorenzo|L|0000-0002-6422-8253', 'Lembo|Giuseppe|G|']
D000818:Animals D015415:Biomarkers D001921:Brain D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation D002561:Cerebrovascular Disorders D060825:Cognitive Dysfunction D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging D006801:Humans D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted D000069550:Machine Learning D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging D009415:Nerve Net D059906:Neuroimaging D058996:Quality Improvement D057170:Translational Research, Biomedical D066127:White Matter
cerebrovascular diseases vascular cognitive impairment dementia brain magnetic resonance imaging