Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating disease of the central nervous system. In particular, excess iron is considered to play an essential role in lesion activity. In this study, we combine iron-reflecting quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) and myelin water fraction (MWF) with histology in post-mortem tissue. Our results show that elevated iron concentrations at the lesion rim reflect pro-inflammatory microglial activity, suggesting to use QSM to determine levels of lesion inflammation and MWF for detecting ongoing demyelination.
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