Principal Investigator: philippa Johnson

Co-PI: Sofia Cerda-Gonzalez

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): 

Structural MRI is the current gold standard for imaging cats presenting with neurological disease. Although these routine MRI techniques provide information as to the brain’s macrostructure and the degree of contrast enhancement of tissues, these provide largely qualitative (i.e. subjective) evaluations of disease, and rarely result in a definitive diagnosis of the cause of neurologic disease. In the human medical field, advanced MRI techniques have been developed to overcome some of these challenges, enabling assessment of the brain’s microstructure, plasticity, molecular structure, physiology, and associated flow dynamics. When applied to the diseased brain, these techniques routinely assist in diagnosing, grading, and predicting long-term outcome, and can aid in biopsy and surgical planning. Specifically, perfusion and diffusion imaging has proven successful for differentiating disease processes and grading the malignancy of brain tumors. CSF flow analytics have allowed for the non-invasive determination of intracranial pressure (ICP) and compliance and are now routinely used in guiding surgical intervention in humans. Tractography, in turn, has allowed the detailed examination of white matter anatomy in humans, and is another technique used in evaluation of how white matter is affected by neurological disease. These techniques have recently begun to be adapted for use in veterinary medicine, with initial studies having focused on imaging the canine brain. In contrast, only a small subset of these techniques have been used in cats, primarily to image induced pathology in the research setting, with limited consideration of clinical applications. We aim to demonstrate the utility of these techniques for evaluating the normal feline brain, with a longterm goal of improving the diagnosis and evaluation of feline neurological disease. Ten neurologically normal research cats will be recruited for this MRI study. Perfusion and diffusion-weighted sequences, cerebrospinal fluid flow analysis, and tractography will be used to examine the normal anatomy and function of the feline brain. The data obtained will undergo processing and analysis in an advanced computing laboratory that will be able to adapt techniques currently used in advanced human imaging to the smaller feline brain. The results of this analysis will allow for multiple publications documenting the normal feline diffusion and perfusion parameters, CSF flow dynamics and white matter structure.