Metabolic and Structural Alterations in the Motor System Following Spinal Cord Injury: An In-Vivo H-MR Spectroscopy Investigation.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) disrupts spinal tracts and neuronal pathways, including those in the primary motor cortex (M1) and the lumbar cord enlargement (LCE) involved in motor control. This study sought to determine whether metabolite concentrations deviate between SCI and healthy controls (HC) in M1 and LCE using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (H-MRS) and structural MRI, and if these correlate with clinical impairment. Sixteen chronic SCI (mean age: 54.

Age-Trajectories of Higher-Order Diffusion Properties of Major Brain Metabolites in Cerebral and Cerebellar Gray Matter Using In Vivo Diffusion-Weighted MR Spectroscopy at 3T.

Healthy brain aging involves changes in both brain structure and function, including alterations in cellular composition and microstructure across brain regions. Unlike diffusion-weighted MRI (dMRI), diffusion-weighted MR spectroscopy (dMRS) can assess cell-type specific microstructural changes, providing indirect information on both cell composition and microstructure through the quantification and interpretation of metabolites' diffusion properties. This work investigates age-related changes in the higher-order diffusion properties of total N-Acetyl-aspartate (neuronal biomarker), total choline (glial biomarker), and total creatine (both neuronal and glial biomarker) beyond the classical apparent diffusion coefficient in cerebral and cerebellar gray matter of healthy human brain.

Diffusion-weighted MR spectroscopy of the prostate.

Purpose: Prostate tissue has a complex microstructure, mainly composed of epithelial and stromal cells, and of extracellular (acinar-luminal) spaces. Diffusion-weighted MR spectroscopy (DW-MRS) is ideally suited to explore complex microstructure in vivo with metabolites selectively distributed in different subspaces. To date, this technique has been applied to brain and muscle.

Diffusion-weighted MR spectroscopy: Consensus, recommendations, and resources from acquisition to modeling.

Brain cell structure and function reflect neurodevelopment, plasticity, and aging; and changes can help flag pathological processes such as neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation. Accurate and quantitative methods to noninvasively disentangle cellular structural features are needed and are a substantial focus of brain research. Diffusion-weighted MRS (dMRS) gives access to diffusion properties of endogenous intracellular brain metabolites that are preferentially located inside specific brain cell populations.

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy investigation in the right human hippocampus following spinal cord injury.

Objective: Preclinical studies have shown that cognitive impairments following spinal cord injury (SCI), such as impaired spatial memory, are linked to inflammation, neurodegeneration, and reduced neurogenesis in the right hippocampus. This cross-sectional study aims to characterize metabolic and macrostructural changes in the right hippocampus and their association to cognitive function in traumatic SCI patients.

Methods: Within this cross-sectional study, cognitive function was assessed in 28 chronic traumatic SCI patients and 18 age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy controls by a visuospatial and verbal memory test.

MP-PCA denoising for diffusion MRS data: promises and pitfalls.

Diffusion-weighted (DW) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) suffers from a lower signal to noise ratio (SNR) compared to conventional MRS owing to the addition of diffusion attenuation. This technique can therefore strongly benefit from noise reduction strategies. In the present work, Marchenko-Pastur principal component analysis (MP-PCA) denoising is tested on Monte Carlo simulations and on in vivo DW-MRS data acquired at 9.

Macromolecular background signal and non-Gaussian metabolite diffusion determined in human brain using ultra-high diffusion weighting.

Purpose: Definition of a macromolecular MR spectrum based on diffusion properties rather than relaxation time differences and characterization of non-Gaussian diffusion of brain metabolites with strongly diffusion-weighted MR spectroscopy.

Methods: Short echo time MRS with strong diffusion-weighting with b-values up to 25 ms/μm at two diffusion times was implemented on a Connectom system and applied in combination with simultaneous spectral and diffusion decay modeling. Motion-compensation was performed with a combined method based on the simultaneously acquired water and a macromolecular signal.

Premature Deaths Due to Silicosis in Turkey, 2006-2017: A Twelve-Year Longitudinal Study.

Background: Deaths due to epidemics of silicosis still continue to be reported both in developing and developed countries, and silica exposure from different sectors remains an important occupational health concern.

Aims: To identify characteristics of silicosis cases by focusing on a developing country and evaluate the frequency of and factors related to premature deaths and also reveal preventable causes of premature deaths in silicosis.

Study Design: Retrospective cohort.

NMR signal for particles diffusing under potentials: From path integrals and numerical methods to a model of diffusion anisotropy.

We study the influence of diffusion on NMR experiments when the molecules undergo random motion under the influence of a force field and place special emphasis on parabolic (Hookean) potentials. To this end, the problem is studied using path integral methods. Explicit relationships are derived for commonly employed gradient waveforms involving pulsed and oscillating gradients.