Sarah Morris
Doctor of Philosophy in Physics (PhD)
Research Topic
Development, validation and application of advanced MRI techniques to measure white matter microstructure
Cornelia Laule
Associate Professor
Research Classification
Research Interests
Auto-Immune Diseases
Axons
brain
Central Nervous System Inflammatory Diseases
Cerebral Atrophy
Histology
image analysis
Imaging
Inflammation
magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy
multiple sclerosis
myelin
Nervous System Development
Neurodegenerative diseases
Neurological diseases
Neurological diseases
Neuronal Systems
pain
Pathology
Schizophrenia
Spinal Cord Diseases
spinal cord
Spinal cord injury
Relevant Degree Programs
Affiliations to Research Centres, Institutes & Clusters
Research Options
I am available and interested in collaborations (e.g. clusters, grants).
I am interested in and conduct interdisciplinary research.
I am interested in working with undergraduate students on research projects.
Research Methodology
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
magnetic resonance spectroscopy
Histology
image analysis
human post mortem brain and spinal cord tissue
Recruitment
Master's students
Doctoral students
Postdoctoral Fellows
Any time / year round
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Supervision Enquiry
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Graduate Student Supervision
Doctoral Student Supervision (Jan 2008 - April 2022)
Exploring myelin water imaging: from application to atlases to algorithms (2021)
No abstract available.
Master's Student Supervision (2010 - 2021)
Correlations of serum neurofilament light chain and quantitative magnetic resonance imaging metrics in multiple sclerosis (2021)
No abstract available.
Concurrent transcranial magnetic stimulation and magnetic resonance spectroscopy in phantoms and humans (2019)
No abstract available.
In vivo measurement of absolute metabolite concentrations with quantitative magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy (2019)
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) measures relative signals arising from spins on different metabolites, e.g. N-Acetyl aspartate (NAA). To improve the interpretability of changes caused by disease, it is optimal to convert these relative signals to absolute concentrations e.g. by referencing it to the MR signal of water. Segmentation of high-resolution qualitative magnetic resonance images (MRI) is an accessible and easy-to-use method to estimate the properties of tissue water in the spectroscopic volume of interest (VOI), including water content, [H₂O], and relaxation properties (T₁, T₂) with pre-determined literature values. However, these tissue properties can change in disease and with age. Therefore, we proposed the use of a quantitative MRI approach to reference metabolite concentrations by measuring subject-specific T₁ and T₂ relaxation as well as water content maps. The approach was first validated by measuring a range of biologically relevant water contents and metabolite concentrations in vitro. [H₂O] was overestimated by 4.8% on average, while NAA concentrations were underestimated by 9.9%. In a study of ten healthy controls comparing the traditional segmentation quantification with the novel quantitative MRI method, we observed larger variabilities for subject-specific water properties, which did not propagate to the variability of the absolute metabolite concentrations of the neurochemicals (p > 0.37). Metabolite concentrations were lower with the quantitative MRI approach by -5.4% (p=0.002) in a white matter volume of interest (VOI) and -2.4% (p=0.002) in a grey matter VOI compared to the segmentation-based quantification.The quantitative MRI method for calculating absolute metabolite concentrations in MRS showed promising results, offering a potential alternative for the currently widely used segmentation approach.
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Current Students & Alumni
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Membership Status
Member of G+PS
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Location
Vancouver General Hospital
Program Affiliations
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