Abstract #3119

Vavasour I, Li D, Laule C, Traboulsee A, MacKay A

The goal of this study was to determine correlations between water content (WC), myelin water content (MWC), T1 relaxation time (T1), T2 relaxation time (T2) and magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) to determine to what extent these MR measurements are independent measures of brain pathology in MS. MTR was found to be highly correlated with T1 and WC indicating that edema, inflammation and changes in extracellular water can play a strong role in determining lesion MTR. MWC was not strongly correlated with any other MR measurement and therefore is an independent measure of pathology.