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Relevance of NODDI to Characterise In Vivo the Microstructural Abnormalities of Multiple Sclerosis Cortex and Cortical Lesions: A 3T Study
Elisabetta Pagani1, Paolo Preziosa1,2, Raffaello Bonacchi1,2, Laura Cacciaguerra1,2,3, Massimo Filippi1,2,3,4,5, and Maria A. Rocca1,2,3
1Neuroimaging Research Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy, 2Neurology Unit, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy, 3Vita-Salute San Raffaele Unversity, Milan, Italy, 4Neurorehabilitation Unit, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy, 5Neurophysiology Service, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy
A significant neurite loss occurs in the cortex of multiple sclerosis patients, being more severe with longer disease duration and more severe disability. Cortical lesions show a further reduction, with increased  inflammation, gliosis, and simplification of neurite complexity.
Figure 2. Scatter plots of NODDI indexes obtained within the normal-appearing cortex (NA-cortex) and cortical lesions (CLs) of MS patients and healthy controls.
Figure 1. The postprocessing is shown for a representative MS patient: after the segmentation of cortical lesions and gray matter, masks are overlapped on the maps of intracellular volume fraction (ICV_f) and orientation dispersion (ODI).