News

Thank you for taking an interest in the patient-centered research, the scientists, the core laboratory services, and the mission of the Buffalo Neuroimaging Analysis Center. It’s a pleasure to share highlights from 2021 and invite you to stay in touch with our progress on the developments that matter most to you. We hope you find this 2021 Newsletter informative and welcome your comments and suggestions. 

There is no commonly-available way for clinical neurologists to use an “everyday” MRI to provide their multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with meaningful news about their disease progression, including brain tissue changes associated with physical and cognitive impairment. The reason? Conventional MRI methods in the vast majority of clinical settings are inadequate in creating scans that can be used to measure two of the most reliable known “markers” of MS progression. 

In August of this year, though, BNAC researchers published their NeuroSTREAM MSBase study. The study demonstrated that neurologists using a new, open-source software—NeuroSTREAM, recently co-developed by BNAC scientists—along with the widely-available T2-FLAIR MRI protocol, can perform and read scans that confidently assess reliable and clinically meaningful proxies of the two critical markers—salient central brain lesion volume (SCLV) and lateral ventricle volume (LVV)—in regular clinical routine settings and even in the face of complete scanner changes.

Ferdinand Schweser, Ph.D., BNAC’s Director of Sequence Development, will lead an international team exploring the link between deep gray matter iron and multiple sclerosis progression. The four-year, $1.4 million NIH-funded study will analyze thousands of MRI scans taken over 10 years to establish an objective means to assess brain iron status that could serve as part of a biomarker of MS disease progression and remission.

BNAC researchers led by Dejan Jakimovski, M.D. Ph.D., have been awarded a pilot research grant by the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC) to determine which brain structures are responsible for specific types of cognitive decline in 100 aging MS patients. The results could open the door for researchers to monitor the most clinically relevant brain regions and potentially predict an individual patient’s risk for cognitive decline as well as appropriate treatment.

As new disease-modifying therapies extend the lives of people with multiple sclerosis by as many as 20 years or more, it becomes increasingly important to understand the causes of cognitive decline experienced by a growing percent of people with MS.

NeurologyLive®, a multimedia platform dedicated to providing health care professionals with direct access to expert-driven, practice-changing news and insights in neurology, welcomes Buffalo Neuroimaging Analysis Center to its Strategic Alliance Partnership (SAP) program.

Brain atrophy and lesion burden are associated with disability progression in a multiple sclerosis real-world dataset using only T2-FLAIR. Using the largest MRI-realworld multiple sclerosis dataset studied to date, the NeuroSTREAM-MSBase study, recently published in Neurogimage/Clinical, is the fruition of a collaboration between Sydney Neuroimaging Analysis Centre, Buffalo Neuroimaging Analysis Center (BNAC), MSBase and clinicians across the globe.

We are pleased to present our BNAC Newsletter, a periodic publication about the work of our Center. This issue includes updates about our latest research, the academic and educational achievements of our staff, and information about our work as a core laboratory providing analysis services around the world.