Clinicn Investigator, Assc Prf Interdisciplinary Brain Center, Mass General Research Institute

Associate Professor of Neurology Harvard Medical School

Associate Neurologist Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital

MD Sanford School of Medicine @ University of South Dakota 2004

autoantibodies; diffusion tensor imaging; immunologic factors; leukoencephalitis acute hemorrhagic; multiple sclerosis; multiple sclerosis relapsing-remitting; myelin-associated glycoprotein; neurocognitive functioning; neuromyelitis optica; optical coherence tomography; postpartum period; retrograde degeneration; spinal cord

The Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Imaging Lab, directed by Eric Klawiter, MD, MSc, focuses on MS clinical research as well as the application and development of new imaging methods to better understand, diagnose and treat MS.

Through the use of novel imaging techniques, we examine changes in structural and functional brain networks in MS in relation to clinical outcomes such as cognition. The overall goal is to integrate novel imaging techniques into therapeutic clinical trials, which our lab is also involved with.

The goals of our research are to:

• Understand the pathology that gives rise to symptoms and cognitive impairment associated with MS
• Develop biomarkers for early diagnosis of MS
• Develop more effective treatments for MS

Our current imaging dataset consists of data from the 3T Connectom scanner and an ultra-high field 7T scanner on patients with MS including:

• Longitudinal structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
• Longitudinal resting state functional MRI
• Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)
• Advanced diffusion imaging (i.e. Q-ball and axon diameter modeling)
• Neurocognitive testing
• Optical coherence tomography (OCT)
• Clinical data

We also plan, implement and write customized code to streamline data processing and analysis.