The Application of Neuroimaging to Healthy and Diseased Brains: Present and Future

Citation: Kassubek J (2017) The Application of Neuroimaging to Healthy and Diseased Brains: Present and Future. Brain imaging has become a core technical element of the clinical work-up in patients with neu-rological and psychiatric diseases including nervous system manifestations of systemic diseases. Beyond (but closely connected to) that clinical approach, the opportunities of brain imaging have radically changed our assessment of brain structure and function in health and also their alterations in association with disease. Neuroimaging helps to understand how the brain and the other parts of the nervous system work and what structural or functional alterations may be associated with a given clinical presentation of a disease or medical condition. This aspect of clinicoradiological correlations—which is intrinsically tied to neuroanatomy—needs to be addressed both in a clinical and in a neuroscientific context in order to deepen our understanding of what can be visualized by imaging of the nervous system. To reach this goal, the approach has to be integrative and multidisciplinary in nature, collecting clinically oriented researchers and neuroscientists of different areas. The application to the healthy and diseased brain's texture is independent of the neuroimaging modality—although magnetic resonance imaging seems to be the most promising technical tool to decode brain structure and function, given its development over the recent decade, other brain mapping techniques including but not limited to electric/magnetic source imaging or radioligand imaging have important further aspects to add to the assessment of the working brain. In addition, approaches with correlation analyses with multimodal data from other technical tools or clinical parameters (including genomics, metabolomics, and many more) for the definition of the investigated phenotype will remain one important element for the further establishment of neuroimaging metrics. Finally, translational neuroimaging research will help to further expand our systematic knowledge of the physiology and pathology in the human and animal neural system. In this integra-tive approach, neuroimaging will be the core element to elaborate the concept of computer-based neuroanatomy and pathoneuroanatomy. Such a framework is also essential for studies on functional reserve and compensation in aging and disease and the development of the growing brain. Advanced neuroimaging is per se " descriptive " as a technique, but has recently moved away from mere qualitative characteristics of the brain's structural and functional organization to quantitative measures and predictive models that are becoming practical for use as biological markers or for treatment monitoring in disease (1). As such, neuroimaging …