Our team of MRI Scientists works on the development of new imaging techniques and on the investigation of magnetic resonance signal generation in biological tissues. We are physicists within the departments of Physics and Astronomy, Pediatrics, and Radiology. Our specific interests are MR signal formation in the presence of magnetically inhomogeneous tissues, such as nerve fibres or blood vessels and the application of our new MRI techniques to the investigation of tissue damage and repair in brain injury due to preterm birth,  multiple sclerosis, and traumatic brain injury. We collaborate with various researchers from the departments of Physics and Astronomy, Pediatrics, Radiology, Neurology, Pathology, and internationally.

New software: DECAES for rapid myelin water and luminal water analysis

We are pleased to present DECAES, a free software tool written in Julia. It computes myelin water and luminal water maps in under one minute. You can find a paper on the method here and the software can be found on Jon Doucette’s Github page. Please contact us if you are interested in MWI and we will be happy to help with data acquisition sequences and analysis.

QSM toolbox by Christian Kames is available on github

You can find Christian’s RTS algorithm and implementations of other popular algorithms here: https://github.com/kamesy/QSM.m

Click here for an overview of MRI research at UBC.

Mapping cerebrovascular health

We have a gas control system (RespirAct™, Thornhill Medical) that allows us to map cerebrovascular reactivity using our MRI scanners. We can create maps of the brains vascular health that were shown to be useful in a wide range of conditions, such as  Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or traumatic brain injury.  Please contact us at the email address below for further details.

Selected recent publications

Multi-echo dipole inversion for magnetic susceptibility mapping. Kames C, Doucette J, Rauscher A. Magn Reson Med. 2023 Jun;89(6):2391-2401. doi: 10.1002/mrm.29588

Orientation dependence of R2 relaxation in the newborn brain. Bartels LM, Doucette J, Birkl C, Zhang Y, Weber AM, Rauscher A. Neuroimage. 2022 Dec 1;264:119702. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119702

Quantitative myelin imaging with MRI and PET: an overview of techniques and their validation status.  van der Weijden CWJ, Biondetti E, Gutmann IW, Dijkstra H, McKerchar R, de Paula Faria D, de Vries EFJ, Meilof JF, Dierckx RAJO, Prevost VH, Rauscher A. Brain. 2022 Nov 21:awac436. doi: 10.1093/brain/awac436

Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging reflects different levels of histologically determined myelin densities in multiple sclerosis, including remyelination in inactive multiple sclerosis lesions. Wiggermann V, Endmayr V, Hernández-Torres E, Höftberger R, Kasprian G, Hametner S, Rauscher A. Brain Pathol. 2023 Jan 31:e13150. doi: 10.1111/bpa.13150

Recovering SWI-filtered phase data using deep learning Kames C, Doucette J, Birkl C, Rauscher A. Magn Reson Med. 2022 Feb;87(2):948-959.

Non-negative least squares computation for in vivo myelin mapping using simulated multi-echo spin-echo T2 decay data. Wiggermann V, Vavasour IM, Kolind SH, MacKay AL, Helms G, Rauscher A. NMR Biomed. 2020 Dec;33(12):e4277

DECAES – DEcomposition and Component Analysis of Exponential Signals. Doucette J, Kames C, Rauscher A. Z Med Phys. 2020 Nov;30(4):271-278.

Birkl C, Doucette J, Fan M, Hernández-Torres E, Rauscher A.  Myelin water imaging depends on white matter fiber orientation in the human brain. Magn Reson Med. 2021 Apr;85(4):2221-223

Birkl C, Birkl-Toeglhofer AM, Kames C, Goessler W, Haybaeck J, Fazekas F, Ropele S, Rauscher A.: The influence of iron oxidation state on quantitative MRI parameters in post mortem human brain.  Neuroimage. 2020 Jun 23;220:117080.

Y. Zhang, A. Rauscher, C. Kames and A.M. Weber Quantitative Analysis of Punctate White Matter Lesions in Neonates Using Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping and R2* Relaxation American Journal of Neuroradiology June 2019

Birkl C, Birkl-Toeglhofer AM, Endmayr V, Hoftberger R, Kasprian G, Krebs C, Haybaeck J, Rauscher A.  The influence of brain iron on myelin water imaging.  Neuroimage. 2019 May 17.

Kor D, Birkl C, Ropele S, Doucette J, Xu T, Wiggermann V, Hernández-Torres E, Hametner S, Rauscher A. The role of iron and myelin in orientation dependent R2 * of white matter NMR Biomed. 2019 Apr 30:e4092.

Doucette J, Wei L, Hernández-Torres E, Kames C, Forkert ND, Aamand R, Lund TE, Hansen B, Rauscher A. Rapid solution of the Bloch-Torrey equation in anisotropic tissue: Application to dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI of cerebral white matter. Neuroimage. 2019 Jan 15;185:198-207.

Kames C, Wiggermann V, Rauscher A. Rapid two-step dipole inversion for susceptibility mapping with sparsity priors.  Neuroimage. 2018 Feb 15;167:276-283.

Hernández-Torres E, Kassner N, Forkert ND, Wei L, Wiggermann V, Daemen M, Machan L, Traboulsee A, Li D, Rauscher A. Anisotropic cerebral vascular architecture causes orientation dependency in cerebral blood flow and volume measured with dynamic susceptibility contrast magnetic resonance imaging. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2017 Mar;37(3):1108-1119.

Wright AD, Jarrett M, Vavasour I, Shahinfard E, Kolind S, van Donkelaar P, Taunton J, Li D, Rauscher A. Myelin Water Fraction Is Transiently Reduced after a Single Mild Traumatic Brain Injury–A Prospective Cohort Study in Collegiate Hockey Players. PLoS One. 2016 Feb 25;11(2):e0150215.