Abstract #3314

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

Tommy Boshkovski¹, Atef Badji^1,2, Predrag Janic³, Ljupco Kocarev³, Julien Cohen-Adad^1,2, Antonio Giorgio⁴, Nicola De Stefano⁴, Bratislav Misic⁵, and Nikola Stikov^1,6

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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