Cornelia Laule

Associate Professor

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 Thesis-Based 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
I support public scholarship, e.g. through the Public Scholars Initiative, and am available to supervise students and Postdocs interested in collaborating with external partners as part of their research.
I support experiential learning experiences, such as internships and work placements, for my graduate students and Postdocs.
I am open to hosting Visiting International Research Students (non-degree, up to 12 months).
I am interested in hiring Co-op students for research placements.

Complete these steps before you reach out to a faculty member!

Check requirements
  • Familiarize yourself with program requirements. You want to learn as much as possible from the information available to you before you reach out to a faculty member. Be sure to visit the graduate degree program listing and program-specific websites.
  • Check whether the program requires you to seek commitment from a supervisor prior to submitting an application. For some programs this is an essential step while others match successful applicants with faculty members within the first year of study. This is either indicated in the program profile under "Admission Information & Requirements" - "Prepare Application" - "Supervision" or on the program website.
Focus your search
  • Identify specific faculty members who are conducting research in your specific area of interest.
  • Establish that your research interests align with the faculty member’s research interests.
    • Read up on the faculty members in the program and the research being conducted in the department.
    • Familiarize yourself with their work, read their recent publications and past theses/dissertations that they supervised. Be certain that their research is indeed what you are hoping to study.
Make a good impression
  • Compose an error-free and grammatically correct email addressed to your specifically targeted faculty member, and remember to use their correct titles.
    • Do not send non-specific, mass emails to everyone in the department hoping for a match.
    • Address the faculty members by name. Your contact should be genuine rather than generic.
  • Include a brief outline of your academic background, why you are interested in working with the faculty member, and what experience you could bring to the department. The supervision enquiry form guides you with targeted questions. Ensure to craft compelling answers to these questions.
  • Highlight your achievements and why you are a top student. Faculty members receive dozens of requests from prospective students and you may have less than 30 seconds to pique someone’s interest.
  • Demonstrate that you are familiar with their research:
    • Convey the specific ways you are a good fit for the program.
    • Convey the specific ways the program/lab/faculty member is a good fit for the research you are interested in/already conducting.
  • Be enthusiastic, but don’t overdo it.
Attend an information session

G+PS regularly provides virtual sessions that focus on admission requirements and procedures and tips how to improve your application.

 

ADVICE AND INSIGHTS FROM UBC FACULTY ON REACHING OUT TO SUPERVISORS

These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a potential thesis supervisor.

Graduate Student Supervision

Doctoral Student Supervision

Dissertations completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest dissertations.

Exploring myelin water imaging: from application to atlases to algorithms (2021)

Myelin water imaging (MWI) is a quantitative magnetic resonance (MR) method that specifically measures the myelin content in the central nervous system. MWI operates on the principle that the MR signal of water trapped between myelin bilayers can be extracted from the total MR signal based on a characteristic short T2 relaxation time. The ratio of myelin water signal relative to the total signal is termed myelin water fraction (MWF), used as a quantitative biomarker for myelin. This thesis explores three aspects of MWI: application, atlases, and algorithms. Firstly, the MWI was applied to study cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM), which is a common spinal cord neurodegenerative disease. The function of the spinal cord conduction was assessed by an electrophysiologic technique called somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEP). Significant MWF reduction was observed in those CSM patients with functional deficits (e.g. delayed SSEP latency). A linear correlation between the MWF and the SSEP latency was discovered in CSM. Secondly, the MWI atlases, which represent the MWI normative references of the normal myelin distribution in the brain and spinal cord, were created by coregistering and averaging the MWI images acquired from many healthy volunteers. These resulting atlases were utilized to demonstrate areas of demyelination in individuals with pathological conditions such as multiple sclerosis. The MWI atlases have been uploaded on the Internet and made publicly available. Thirdly, the current MWI data analysis, based on the non-negative least squares (NNLS) method, was accelerated by implementing the neural network (NN) algorithm. A NN model was trained by the ground truth labels produced by the commonly used NNLS method. The trained NN model achieved to yield a whole-brain MWF map in 33 seconds, which is 150 faster than the NNLS method. Finally, a novel T2 data analysis method, namely the spectrum analysis for multiple exponentials via experimental condition oriented simulation (SAME-ECOS), was proposed. SAME-ECOS is a simulation-derived solver that tailored for different MR experimental conditions. When dealing with the MWI data, it is found that SAME-ECOS largely surpassed the NNLS method in terms of calculation accuracy and speed.

View record

Master's Student Supervision

Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.

Correlations of serum neurofilament light chain and quantitative magnetic resonance imaging metrics in multiple sclerosis (2021)

Neurofilaments are neuronal-specific proteins involved in neuroaxonal functions like determining axonal diameter and transporting organelles and other proteins. After neuronal tissue damage, neurofilaments are detectable in the cerebrospinal fluid and blood in many neurological diseases including multiple sclerosis (MS). Metrics derived from quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques specific to myelin content and axonal integrity have been proposed as potential biomarkers of MS disease processes. While there have been studies associating higher neurofilament levels, particularly the light chain (NfL), in blood with disease progression, greater lesion volume, and atrophy, few studies have examined the relationship between NfL and advanced imaging measures in MS. In this thesis, linear regressions were used to assess the relationship between serum NfL and MRI measures in the whole brain, normal appearing white matter, and lesions. 103 participants (20 clinically isolated syndrome, 33 relapsing-remitting MS, 30 secondary progressive MS, 20 primary progressive MS) underwent 3T MRI to obtain the measures myelin water fraction (MWF), water content, high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) derived axial diffusivity (AD), radial diffusivity (RD), and fractional anisotropy (FA), diffusion basis spectrum imaging (DBSI) derived AD, RD, FA, water, fiber, restricted, and hindered ratios, T1, geometric mean T2 (GMT2), normalized brain, lesion, thalamic, and deep grey matter (GM) volumes, and cortical thickness. Blood was collected on the same day as MR experiments and quantified using single molecule array (SIMOA) technology (Quanterix). Some measures were transformed for normality and multiple comparison correction was applied. Higher serum NfL levels were associated with lower brain structure volumes (thalamus, deep GM, normalized brain volume) and cortical thickness as well as higher lesion volume. Furthermore, increasing serum NfL levels were seen with increasing metrics of myelin damage (MWF decrease, RD increase), axonal damage (FA decrease, AD increase), edema and inflammation (T1, GMT2 increase), and decreasing metrics for cellularity (restricted ratio). The results show that myelin and axonal health are strongly coupled where there is a cascade of damage occurring in the MS brain causing NfL release. Serum NfL may be a useful biomarker that reflects not only axonal loss, but also myelin damage and brain volume changes.

View record

Concurrent transcranial magnetic stimulation and magnetic resonance spectroscopy in phantoms and humans (2019)

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an increasingly popular treatment for psychiatric diseases including depression, the most common cause of psychiatric disability worldwide. TMS is an effective treatment for depression even in patients where conventional pharmacological and therapeutic treatments for the disease have been unsuccessful. As the mechanism of TMS relies on electromagnetic induction, it is a completely noninvasive treatment.While TMS is known to be effective in treating depression, exactly how TMS affects the brain is an active area of research. To properly study the effects of TMS in vivo, non-invasive methods are required. As such, magnetic resonance (MR) modalities present an attractive option due to their non-invasive nature. There is interest in studying the effects of TMS using MR concurrently with TMS, however, concurrent TMS/MR is challenging due to TMS-related distortions to the MR scanners magnetic field. MR Spectroscopy (MRS) is ideal for TMS/MR applications as not only does MRS provide information about brain chemicals thought to change during TMS, it also is sensitive enough to characterize distortions that are present in other MR images but not as easy to recognize.In this thesis, non-water-suppressed MRS experiments were performed concurrently with TMS to characterize distortions to the MRS water signal. Phantom experiments were performed under a wide range of experimental conditions, varying MRS voxel positioning and parameters related to TMS pulsing. Distortions investigated included signal-noise ratio, free induction decay spikes, B0 inhomogeneity, eddy currents, and frequency modulation sidebands. As a proof of concept, concurrent TMS/MRS results from a human experiment are presented.The dominant source of signal distortion was found to be related to the presence of the TMS coil itself, and the magnitude of the distortions depended most strongly on the position of the MRS voxel relative to the TMS coil. To a lesser extent, TMS pulses further distorted MRS signal, particularly at higher pulse amplitudes and when there was a smaller time delay between the TMS pulse and 90◦ radiofrequency pulse.This work presents results from the first concurrent TMS/MRS experiments reported. It is intended that these results provide guidance for future research using concurrent TMS/MRS.

View record

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.

View record

Current Students & Alumni

This is a small sample of students and/or alumni that have been supervised by this researcher. It is not meant as a comprehensive list.
 
 

If this is your researcher profile you can log in to the Faculty & Staff portal to update your details and provide recruitment preferences.

 
 

Get key application advice, hear about the latest research opportunities and keep up with the latest news from UBC's graduate programs.