Low-field portable brain MRI in CNS demyelinating disease

Farrah J Mateen; Clarissa Zimmerman Cooley; Jason P Stockmann; Dylan R Rice; Andre C Vogel; Lawrence L Wald

doi:10.1016/j.msard.2021.102903

Low-field portable brain MRI in CNS demyelinating disease

Mult Scler Relat Disord. 2021 Jun:51:102903. doi: 10.1016/j.msard.2021.102903. Epub 2021 Mar 18.

Authors

Farrah J Mateen¹, Clarissa Zimmerman Cooley², Jason P Stockmann², Dylan R Rice³, Andre C Vogel³, Lawrence L Wald⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. Electronic address: fmateen@mgh.harvard.edu.
² Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
³ Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
⁴ Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

PMID: 33780808
DOI: 10.1016/j.msard.2021.102903

Abstract

A low-field (80 mT), portable MRI scanner has been developed that may address barriers to MRI for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). As a proof of concept study, we imaged two participants with central nervous system demyelinating disease by both a standard 1.5 Tesla MRI and the portable MRI scanner. These images demonstrate the ability to identify a solitary demyelinating lesion in early stage disease and cortical atrophy and chronic white matter changes in late stage disease. In spite of device limitations, including border distortion and lower image quality, the portable device has important implications for addressing barriers to care in people with MS.

Keywords: Demyelinating disease; Magnetic resonance imaging; Multiple sclerosis; Neuroimaging.

Publication types

Letter

MeSH terms

Brain / diagnostic imaging
Demyelinating Diseases* / diagnostic imaging
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Multiple Sclerosis* / diagnostic imaging
Neuroimaging