Current Studies

MRI-Derived Neuromuscular Signatures to Predict Surgical Response in Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy

Cervical myelopathy is the most common form of spinal cord injury in adults and causes worsening neurological dysfunction including hand weakness and diminished coordination. Surgical management of myelopathy is challenging due to the low diagnostic certainty of the underlying pathology and the lack of predictive factors to determine which patients may or may not improve. Here we aim to use advanced brain, spinal cord, and muscle magnetic resonance imaging techniques to fully characterize the mechanisms of hand dysfunction in myelopathy and then develop neuromuscular signatures of hand function that better predict surgical outcomes.

We are currently recruiting patients with myelopathy that are scheduled for surgery.

Dermatomal Mapping with Spinal Cord Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Radiculopathy is a common spinal condition resulting from compression and irritation of the spinal nerve roots, leading to sensory deficits, muscle weakness, and pain. Clinicians use dermatomal sensory testing to localize the level(s) of nerve root injury in radiculopathy; however, dermatomal maps are limited and remain to be quantitatively validated. Here we will use spinal cord functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test hypotheses central to dermatomal maps, advance our knowledge of spinal cord sensory processing in healthy and injured states, and provide preliminary validation of diagnostic markers for radiculopathy while improving our spinal cord fMRI methods.

We are currently recruiting participants with a diagnosis of cervical radiculopathy as well as pain-free control participants.

MuscleMap

The MuscleMap is an open-source, community-supported consortium for whole-body quantitative MRI of muscle. We have three planned phases for the MuscleMap:

1. Develop a standardized acquisition protocol for whole-body quantitative MRI of muscle for the most common MR manufacturers.
2. Generate an open-source large (n≥1,000) annotated multi-site, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic heterogenous whole-body muscle MRI dataset across the lifespan using the standardized acquisition protocol.
3. Create an open-source toolbox for the analysis of whole-body muscle morphometry and composition using the heterogenous whole-body muscle MRI dataset.

We are currently seeking collaborators to contribute to the MuscleMap.