Science Advances leverages a new weapon in brain disease research: quantitative MRI qMRI

Parkinson's disease is a neurological disorder that causes unconscious or uncontrolled movements such as tremors, stiffness, balance, and coordination problems

Parkinson's disease can be detected at an early stage through special brain scans

Most of us are familiar with a method known as MRI, which is often used to look at brain structure

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU), under the guidance of Professor Aviv Mezer, concluded that it is possible to reveal cellular changes

MRI images are used to automatically detect microstructural changes in

Mezer's phD student, Elior Drori, used a new analytical method to clearly reveal biological changes in

qMRI achieves its sensitivity by taking multiple MRI images with different excitation energies, rather than taking the same photo

"Without measurement, you don't know what's normal, what's abnormal in your brain structure, and what changes

"Our discovery is just the tip of the iceberg

This type of analysis will help identify subgroups of patients with Parkinson's disease — some of whom may respond differently to certain drugs than others

References: Mapping microstructural gradients of the human striatum in normal aging and Parkinson's disease