Title: Assessing the impact of iron deposition on diffusion MRI signals
Speaker: Jason Langley, UC Riverside Center for Advanced Neuroimaging
Time: 2:00 p.m., Friday, November 15 (refreshments served at 1:45 p.m.)
Place: P-148 (refreshments across from SPS)
Abstract:
Deep grey matter nuclei undergo neuronal loss or compositional changes in normal aging as well as in certain neurodegenerative diseases (such as Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease). Microstructural differences due to aging or pathology can be examined in vivo with diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or by examining transverse relaxation rates of tissue. Neuronal loss from aging or pathology should remove barriers to diffusion and increase diffusivity values. However, decreases in diffusivity are observed in older adults and in subjects with pathology when compared to younger adults or healthy controls, respectively. Evidence suggests iron may have a substantial impact on diffusion-weighted signal. In this talk, I will give a brief overview of MRI image acquisition techniques and relate these techniques to quantification of iron or diffusion in MRI images. I will cover our attempts to decouple iron and diffusion signal in diffusion-weighted MRI. Applications of this work to aging, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease will also be discussed.