Research

Speeding up the path to diagnosis

Published 13 March 2013

Event 13 March 2013

An international expert in quantitative MRI will outline how improvements in technology will make for faster and more accurate diagnosis and reduce the need for invasive procedures.

Professor Mara Cercignani, Chair of Imaging Physics, will give her inaugural lecture today on her research into ways to improve quantitative MRI.

While conventional MRI takes pictures of our organs, Professor Cercignani will describe how quantitative MRI can reveal features of organ tissue at a microscopic level. This means it could eventually be used in routine examinations and for monitoring the effect of new treatments. It also has the potential to furnish clinical researchers with faster and more accurate results, reducing the time and cost of clinical trials.

Currently, a pharmacological trial based on clinical outcome measures requires a large sample of subjects and long follow-up intervals. Using quantitative MRI the effects on the organs targeted by specific diseases can be shown more rapidly and the number of patients needed for experiments can be reduced.

Professor Cercignani's current projects focus around dementia, attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and motor neurone disease, but she has also worked on other neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

Professor Mara Cercignani inaugural lecture

Professor Cercignani, of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School which is jointly run by Brighton and Sussex universities, said: "One of the techniques I work on is the ability to estimate the density of myelin in the brain. Myelin is the special insulating material that is wrapped around our neurons and allows neuronal signal to travel fast and is targeted by several neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis. The ability to measures its density non-invasively opens up a large number of possibilities, including monitoring the effectiveness of new medicines. My work aims to improve this technique by making it more reliable, and quicker to perform so that it can be one day included in routine examinations.

"Unfortunately, to date, most neurological and psychiatric conditions cannot be cured, and only symptomatic therapies are available. Nevertheless, if this changes in the future, no doubt it will be because we gain a much better understanding of the mechanisms behind the diseases and this is where quantitative MRI can make a real difference."

Professor Cercignani's lecture takes place tonight at 6.30pm at the Chowen Lecture Theatre, Brighton and Sussex Medical School on the University of Sussex campus.