Quantifying the Permeability of Blood-Brain Barrier in MS Patients Under Conventional Treatment

saeid Taheri¹, Gary A. Rosenberg¹, Corey Ford¹

We investigated the permeability of Blood-Brain Barrier by employing contrast-enhanced MRI, a reduced dose of Gd-DTPA and a fast T1 mapping technique. A series of T1 images before and after the injection of contrast agent were acquired. By using Patlak modeling technique and a reference for concentration of Gd-DTPA in plasma we were able to build a permeability map corresponding to the permeability of BBB underlying each pixel. We have recruited ten MS patients under the conventional treatment along with 17 controls and compared results. We were able to distinguish between high and low grade activities of BBB in MS.