Stroke and Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA) are cerebrovascular diseases caused by obstructions of the blood flow, depriving nutrients like oxygen and glucose to brain microstructures. Clinical manifestations after stroke, such as motor and functional deficits, have been studying; however, symptoms like fatigue or reduced attention span, present on chronic stroke and TIA, have barely been explored.
Today clinical Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MR)I used in stroke is focused on identifying lesions and their changes but do not really link these as a possible indicator of impairment of connections in the brain network. Therefore, my project aims to explore novel clinical MRI techniques, such as microstructure imaging based on diffusion MRI and quantitative MRI, to reveal new insights into microstructure features (i.e. cell and axon sizes as well as their densities and general architecture) that might underline why chronic stroke and TIA patients experience deficits like fatigue.
The project is cross-disciplinary bridging biomedical imaging and medical. Thus, enable a synergistic communication with the patient diagnosis in center to design novel MRI protocols that reflect the information medical doctors need. For the project we will recruit subjects to collect the MRI data and analyzed. The subject will be divided into 3 groups: chronic stroke patients, TIA patients, and healthy controls for comparisons.
As result, it is expected to obtain a new clinical neuroimaging tool, which may guide the clinical doctor in identifying patients with a need of interventions for fatigue and/or cognitive dysfunction for a better stroke/TIA recovery.
Figure 1:
A 3-dimensional visualization of normal brain white matter tracts generated by tractography analysis from diffusion tensor imagingin (DTI). Image from paper “Brain Imaging Changes Associated With Risk Factors … “, Friedman, J.I et. Al. (2014).