Structural and Metabolic Brain Imaging

Brain activation is (sometimes) reflected in changes of the acquired MR signal. Depending on the selected acquisition method, these changes may reflect underlying neuronal activation, or just very unspecific changes in local blood oxygenation or flow.The magnetic fingerprint of neuronal activation strongly depends on local physiological processes and on the underlying microscopic composition of the neuronal tissue and microvascular architecture and dynamics. High-resolution structural and quantitative imaging is thus a prerequisite to these structural and hemodynamic properties on a mesoscopic level.
current research

Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Archeological Samples

Archeological samples are often precious and unique and cannot easily be examined without destroying them. Accordingly, noninvasive imaging techniques are an important means of investigating historic specimen. [more]

Multi-Parametric Artificial Neural Network Fitting of Phase-Cycled Balanced SSFP Data

Multi-parametric mapping techniques are an important tool in quantitative brain MRI to enable characterization of tissues and early diagnosis of pathologies within short acquisition times. Longitudinal and transverse relaxation times have proved to be a useful measure for monitoring brain tumors or neurodegenerative diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, or Alzheimer’s disease. [more]

Structure or Exchange?

We analyze the feasibility of chemical exchange detection with balanced steady-state free precession experiments in brain tissues at high to ultra-high fields – an in vitro study. [more]

Improving whole-brain deuterium metabolic imaging

Deuterium Metabolic Imaging (DMI) is an emerging technique to probe metabolic pathways. [more]

Investigation of the energy metabolism with 31P spectroscopy-new

How are the concentrations of high-energy phosphates in the brain influenced by activity or pathology?
[more]

Microvascular imaging of the unstained human superior colliculus

Mapping of the microvasculature of the human brain in 3D is critical to advance our understanding of fMRI signals. [more]

Post mortem brain MRI at 9.4 T

Ultra-high field Magnetic Resonance Imaging of whole post-mortem brains is complementary to histology and pathology studies and can be useful for tissue characterization, sectioning, 3D-reconstruction of sectioned tissue data, and for diagnosis and investigation of neurodegenerative diseases. [more]

Quantitative susceptibility mapping of the human brain at 9.4T

Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) can be used to investigate local tissue structure, but is hampered by several unwanted effects, like background magnetic fields. [more]

High-Resolution Neural Network-Driven Mapping of Multiple Diffusion Metrics Leveraging Asymmetries in the Balanced SSFP Frequency Profile

Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) is widely used for clinical disease assessment as it allows tracking of microstructural diffusion processes and fiber trajectories in white matter (WM) based on the anisotropic motion of water protons. [more]