ArticleAlzheimer's research & therapy2020
T2 heterogeneity: a novel marker of microstructural integrity associated with cognitive decline in people with mild cognitive impairment.
Article in Alzheimer's research & therapy, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Diagnostic Performance of Generative Adversarial Network-Based Deep Learning Methods for Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- In Vivo Meso-Scale Whole-Brain Quantitative Imaging With Tailored MRF on the NexGen 7T Scanner.Magnetic resonance in medicine · 2026Article
- Inter-Individual Differences in TMagnetic resonance in medicine · 2026Article
- Associations Between Hippocampal Transverse Relaxation Time and Amyloid PET in Cognitively Normal Aging Adults.Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI · 2026Article
- Quantitative MRI of the hippocampus reveals microstructural trajectories of aging and Alzheimer's disease pathology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Imaging markers of neuroinflammation in aging and Alzheimer's disease and related dementia: A comprehensive review.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Review
- Ex vivo brain MRI to assess conventional and FLASH brain irradiation effects.Radiotherapy and oncology : journal of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology · 2025Article
- Flexible and cost-effective deep learning for accelerated multi-parametric relaxometry using phase-cycled bSSFP.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Differentiating unirradiated mice from those exposed to conventional or FLASH radiotherapy using MRI.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Association between hippocampal microglia, AD and LATE-NC, and cognitive decline in older adults.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2024Article
- Identification of diffusion, kurtosis, and propagator MRI markers of Alzheimer's disease pathology in post-mortem human tissue.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
- MRAβ: A multimodal MRI-derived amyloid-β biomarker for Alzheimer's disease.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Distribution of Iron, Copper, Zinc and Cadmium in Glia, Their Influence on Glial Cells and Relationship with Neurodegenerative Diseases.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- Longitudinal changes in hippocampal texture from healthy aging to Alzheimer's disease.Brain communications · 2023Article
- Cervical cord myelin abnormality is associated with clinical disability in multiple sclerosis.Multiple sclerosis (Houndmills, Basingstoke, England) · 2021Article
- T2 heterogeneity as an in vivo marker of microstructural integrity in medial temporal lobe subfields in ageing and mild cognitive impairment.NeuroImage · 2021Article
- Article
- Multiparametric Quantitative MRI in Neurological Diseases.Frontiers in neurology · 2021Review
- Cerebral Microstructural Alterations in Patients With Early Parkinson's Disease Detected With Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Measurements.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2021Article
- Accelerated long-term forgetting in healthy older adults predicts cognitive decline over 1 year.Alzheimer's research & therapy · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEarly Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis is vital for development of disease-modifying therapies. Prior to significant brain tissue atrophy, several microstructural changes take place as a result of Alzheimer's pathology. These include deposition of amyloid, tau and iron, as well as altered water homeostasis in tissue and some cell death. T2 relaxation time, a quantitative MRI measure, is sensitive to these changes and may be a useful non-invasive, early marker of tissue integrity which could predict conversion to dementia. We propose that different microstructural changes affect T2 in opposing ways, such that average 'midpoint' measures of T2 are less sensitive than measuring distribution width (heterogeneity). T2 heterogeneity in the brain may present a sensitive early marker of AD pathology.
methodsIn this cohort study, we tested 97 healthy older controls, 49 people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 10 with a clinical diagnosis of AD. All participants underwent structural MRI including a multi-echo sequence for quantitative T2 assessment. Cognitive change over 1 year was assessed in 20 participants with MCI. T2 distributions were modelled in the hippocampus and thalamus using log-logistic distribution giving measures of log-median value (midpoint; T2μ) and distribution width (heterogeneity; T2σ).
resultsWe show an increase in T2 heterogeneity (T2σ; p < .0001) in MCI compared to healthy controls, which was not seen with midpoint (T2μ; p = .149) in the hippocampus and thalamus. Hippocampal T2 heterogeneity predicted cognitive decline over 1 year in MCI participants (p = .018), but midpoint (p = .132) and volume (p = .315) did not. Age affects T2, but the effects described here are significant even after correcting for age.
conclusionsWe show that T2 heterogeneity can identify subtle changes in microstructural integrity of brain tissue in MCI and predict cognitive decline over a year. We describe a new model that considers the competing effects of factors that both increase and decrease T2. These two opposing forces suggest that previous conclusions based on T2 midpoint may have obscured the true potential of T2 as a marker of subtle neuropathology. We propose that T2 heterogeneity reflects microstructural integrity with potential to be a widely used early biomarker of conditions such as AD.
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