Stroke, Dementia, Cognition, MRI, CT, biomarkers
My group offers exciting opportunities in clinical stroke, cognitive neurology and imaging analysis. I am principal investigator of two externally funded studies: -REPERFUSE-NA1 is a prospective, multisite MRI sub-study of ESCAPE–NA1 ClinicalTrialGov # NCT02930018). The overall hypothesis is stroke patients following successful EVT demonstrate substantial early and delayed secondary infarct growth when measured by MRI that can be significantly reduced by NA1. This study will address three specific aims: 1) Determine early secondary infarct growth detectable using DWI (primary outcome) that will be at least 30% smaller in patients receiving NA1 compared to controls, 2) Determine the delayed secondary growth at 90 days related to gradual cellular loss detectable by changes in brain volume (atrophy) in addition to stroke lesion volumes (secondary outcome) that will be significantly reduced in patients receiving NA1 compared to controls, and 3) Determine mechanisms of early secondary stroke injury related to cerebral blood flow (ischemic vs reperfusion), and severity of microvascular injury contributing to oedema and blood-brain barrier (BBB) breakdown. -Longitudinal Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Neurodegenerative and Small Vessel Disease, and Clinical Cognitive Trajectories in Non Demented Patients with Transient Ischemic Attack: The PREVENT study. Research Goals: PREVENT aims to identify dementia risk before cognitive decline occurs among transient ischemic attack (TIA) patients who have a reported 4-fold increase in late life dementia by using biological markers of disease progression, thereby optimizing the opportunity for dementia prevention. Research Aims: We hypothesize that TIA patients have increased rates of cerebral brain atrophy (ml/year) detectable at 12 months after first TIA, measured using serial MRI compared to healthy controls before cognitive decline. The study has three aims: 1. Determine whether higher rates of cortical and hippocampal atrophy can be detected as early as 12 months after TIA and progress over 3 years. 2. Determine predictors of increased rates of brain atrophy, in vivo cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers of AD, and gray and white matter microstructure measured by Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). 3. Determine whether TIA patients have measureable cognitive decline compared to non TIA control subjects over 4 years minimum. We are looking for resourceful, highly motivated and industrious students to pursue graduate studies in epidemiology, image analysis or biomedical engineering.