The use of 7T MRI in multiple sclerosis: review and consensus statement from the North American Imaging in Multiple Sclerosis Cooperative

Daniel M Harrison; Pascal Sati; Eric C Klawiter; Sridar Narayanan; Francesca Bagnato; Erin S Beck; Peter Barker; Alberto Calvi; Alessandro Cagol; Maxime Donadieu; Jeff Duyn; Cristina Granziera; Roland G Henry; Susie Y Huang; Michael N Hoff; Caterina Mainero; Daniel Ontaneda; Daniel S Reich; David A Rudko; Seth A Smith; Siegfried Trattnig; Jonathan Zurawski; Rohit Bakshi; Susan Gauthier; Cornelia Laule

doi:10.1093/braincomms/fcae359

The use of 7T MRI in multiple sclerosis: review and consensus statement from the North American Imaging in Multiple Sclerosis Cooperative

Brain Commun. 2024 Oct 9;6(5):fcae359. doi: 10.1093/braincomms/fcae359. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Daniel M Harrison^{1

2}, Pascal Sati³, Eric C Klawiter⁴, Sridar Narayanan^{5

6}, Francesca Bagnato^{7

8}, Erin S Beck⁹, Peter Barker¹⁰, Alberto Calvi¹¹, Alessandro Cagol^{12

13

14}, Maxime Donadieu¹⁵, Jeff Duyn¹⁶, Cristina Granziera^{12

13

17}, Roland G Henry¹⁸, Susie Y Huang¹⁹, Michael N Hoff²⁰, Caterina Mainero¹⁹, Daniel Ontaneda²¹, Daniel S Reich¹⁵, David A Rudko^{5

22}, Seth A Smith^{23

24}, Siegfried Trattnig²⁵, Jonathan Zurawski²⁶, Rohit Bakshi²⁶, Susan Gauthier²⁷, Cornelia Laule²⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA.
² Department of Neurology, Baltimore VA Medical Center, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA.
³ Neuroimaging Program, Department of Neurology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA 90048, USA.
⁴ Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA.
⁵ McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital, Montreal, QC, Canada, H3A 2B4.
⁶ Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, H3A 2B4.
⁷ Neuroimaging Unit, Neuroimmunology Division, Department of Neurology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37212, USA.
⁸ Department of Neurology, Nashville VA Medical Center, TN Valley Healthcare System, Nashville, TN 37212, USA.
⁹ Department of Neurology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA.
¹⁰ Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
¹¹ Laboratory of Advanced Imaging in Neuroimmunological Diseases, Fundació de Recerca Clínic Barcelona-Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (FRCB-IDIBAPS), Hospital Clinic Barcelona, 08036 Barcelona, Spain.
¹² Translational Imaging in Neurology (ThINk) Basel, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Basel, University of Basel, 4001 Basel, Switzerland.
¹³ Research Center for Clinical Neuroimmunology and Neuroscience Basel (RC2NB), University Hospital Basel, University of Basel, 4001 Basel, Switzerland.
¹⁴ Department of Health Sciences, University of Genova, 16132 Genova, Italy.
¹⁵ Translational Neuroradiology Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
¹⁶ Advanced MRI Section, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
¹⁷ Department of Neurology, University Hospital Basel, 4001 Basel, Switzerland.
¹⁸ Department of Neurology, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
¹⁹ Department of Radiology, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02114, USA.
²⁰ Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
²¹ Mellen Center for Multiple Sclerosis, Neurological Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA.
²² Department of Biomedical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 2B4.
²³ Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37212, USA.
²⁴ Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37212, USA.
²⁵ Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image Guided Therapy, Medical University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
²⁶ Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
²⁷ Department of Neurology, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY 10065, USA.
²⁸ Radiology, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Physics and Astronomy, International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, BC V6T 1Z4.

Abstract

The use of ultra-high-field 7-Tesla (7T) MRI in multiple sclerosis (MS) research has grown significantly over the past two decades. With recent regulatory approvals of 7T scanners for clinical use in 2017 and 2020, the use of this technology for routine care is poised to continue to increase in the coming years. In this context, the North American Imaging in MS Cooperative (NAIMS) convened a workshop in February 2023 to review the previous and current use of 7T technology for MS research and potential future research and clinical applications. In this workshop, experts were tasked with reviewing the current literature and proposing a series of consensus statements, which were reviewed and approved by the NAIMS. In this review and consensus paper, we provide background on the use of 7T MRI in MS research, highlighting this technology's promise for identification and quantification of aspects of MS pathology that are more difficult to visualize with lower-field MRI, such as grey matter lesions, paramagnetic rim lesions, leptomeningeal enhancement and the central vein sign. We also review the promise of 7T MRI to study metabolic and functional changes to the brain in MS. The NAIMS provides a series of consensus statements regarding what is currently known about the use of 7T MRI in MS, and additional statements intended to provide guidance as to what work is necessary going forward to accelerate 7T MRI research in MS and translate this technology for use in clinical practice and clinical trials. This includes guidance on technical development, proposals for a universal acquisition protocol and suggestions for research geared towards assessing the utility of 7T MRI to improve MS diagnostics, prognostics and therapeutic efficacy monitoring. The NAIMS expects that this article will provide a roadmap for future use of 7T MRI in MS.

Keywords: 7 Tesla; magnetic resonance imaging; multiple sclerosis; ultra-high field.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain 2024.

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