Assessment of multiple sclerosis pathology with quantitative magnetic resonance imaging

Quantitative MRI in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) allows for the objective identification of even subtle pathological changes in lesional, perilesional, NAGM, and NAWM tissue. Routine clinical scan protocols need to be tailored to the most diagnostically relevant MR biomarkers, however, to date only a few studies have investigated the particular diagnostic sensitivity of different MR biomarkers to different structural alterations of brain tissue affected by MS. Therefore, we studied 13 MS patients and 14 healthy controls using multiparametric, quantitative MR: we evaluated and compared the ability of nine different MR biomarkers to detect and characterize MS pathology.