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Abstract #3314

The myelin-weighted connectome: a new look at multiple sclerosis

Tommy Boshkovski1, Atef Badji1,2, Predrag Janic3, Ljupco Kocarev3, Julien Cohen-Adad1,2, Antonio Giorgio4, Nicola De Stefano4, Bratislav Misic5, and Nikola Stikov1,6

1NeuroPoly Lab, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada, 2Department of Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada, 3Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Skopje, FYR Macedonia, 4Department of Medicine, Surgery and Neuroscience, University of Siena, Siena, Italy, 5Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, QC, Canada, 6Montreal Heart Institute, Montreal, QC, Canada

Myelin imaging has yet to make its way into standard connectomics protocols. Myelin-specific MRI metrics are useful for the assessment of neurological conditions that affect white matter. In this study we compared the structural connectomes of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and healthy controls. Magnetization transfer ratio was used as a myelin-specific metric computed along each tract (MTR-weighted connectome) and compared against the connectome weighted by fractional anisotropy (FA-weighted connectome). We then identified the connections that were reliably different between MS patients and controls, and found 100 connections that were unique to the MTR-weighted connectome and 62 connections that were unique to the FA-weighted connectome.

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