Zooming into the "Little Brain": Advances in Cerebellar Imaging
Member-Initiated Symposium

ORGANIZERS: Pierre-Louis Bazin, Wietske van der Zwaag

Monday, 18 June 2018

Session Number: MIS-04

Overview
This cerebellar imaging session will show the wealth of information that can be obtained from the cerebellum, an often overlooked brain region. The cerebellum is a vitally important brain structure, involved in tasks ranging from motor control and timekeeping to cognition. The cerebellum is affected in a wide range of diseases, ranging from those affecting the cerebellum specifically, such as cerebellar ataxias, to brain-wide diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis or even psychiatric diseases. In all of these, MRI could make a huge impact in patient treatment. However, the highly convoluted cerebellar cortex means standard image protocols are often too coarse for cerebellar use. With the recently increased availability of advanced MR hardware, the potential for fast progress in cerebellar imaging is enormous. With this session, we hope to inspire sequence developers to turn their best tools to the cerebellum, while drawing the attention of our medical colleagues to what is already possible. Although the ISMRM is unique in the way it joins MR developers and clinicians, the ISMRM meeting does not yet have sessions that follow the pulse-sequence-to-patient path for specific brain regions. 
In the proposed session, after a short introduction by the chairs, four speakers will outline in lectures of 25 minutes each how advanced MRI has enabled them to probe structure, function and connectivity of cerebellar tissue in health and disease.

Target Audience
We welcome a wide audience: MR physicists interested in this challenging environment as well as medical specialists interested in cerebellar disease.

Educational Objectives
As a result of attending this course, participants should be able to:
- Identify what exciting neuroscience tools are available for the cerebellum;
- Explain how to measure cerebellar degeneration in ataxias with quantitative MRI;
- Discuss how new diffusion paradigms are particularly suited to studying the cerebellum; and
- Define what can be understood from multiple sclerosis pathophysiology with cerebellar MRI.