Elisa Tuzzi

Extracellular Amyloid-β (Aβ) deposits are one of the classical hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and their early detection may allow treatment or prevention of the disease. 

Current established techniques for in vivo Aβ quantification, specifically, Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Aβ_1-42-CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) test are hindered by some limitations as they provide invasive and non-specific probes.

On the other hand, Aβ plaques cause effects that can be detected by iron- and myelin-sensitive quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, such as quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM).

QSM is a novel post-processing technique to determine the magnetic susceptibility distribution of the tissue by numerically solving the inverse problem of deriving the local tissue magnetic susceptibility from the measured magnetic field distribution, which is reflected in the phase images of gradient-echo (GRE) sequences. 

Furthermore, ultra-high field (UHF) MRI enables imaging of pathological processes at ultra-high spatial resolution.

My project aims at providing a non-invasive biomarker for AD by using in-vivo and ex-vivo QSM at UHF (9.4 and 14.1T) to detect cortical micro-structural alterations caused by Aβ plaques in AD patients.