Progress being made in Gisborne-based MRI scan research

UHC team members from Mātai Medical Research Institute based in Gisborne: emeritus professor Graeme Bydder (left), Paul Condron, Dr Daniel Cornfeld and Dr Mark Bydder.

Gisborne’s Mātai Medical Research Institute has taken existing MRI research to a new level using ultra-high contrast MRI scanning to help detect early brain changes in many disorders.

A Mātai-led research team developed a promising technique called UHC-MRI, which revealed unusually bright patches in the brain’s white matter in some people after a concussion.

These “whiteouts” may show microscopic injuries that standard scans cannot see. Until now, it was unclear exactly what changes inside the brain caused these bright signals to appear.

“If our method can reliably detect this change, it could become a sensitive, non-invasive tool to assess brain injury and monitor recovery even when regular scans appear normal,” said Dr Mark Bydder, senior research fellow at Mātai and lead author of the study.

The team said the current results were based on a small participant group and larger studies were now underway.

These include a project conducted by Gisborne-based, University of Auckland PhD student Katie Blackburne, who is using UHC-MRI to detect early brain changes after concussion with the aim of predicting recovery and validating persistent symptoms so clinicians can better tailor treatment and support.

Because UHC-MRI is sensitive to changes in white matter, the technique may also help identify or track other conditions at early stages, thanks to its ability to detect subtle alterations in the brain’s wiring system, including multiple sclerosis, stroke and dementia.

Mātai is already running studies exploring whether UHC-MRI can improve early detection of multiple sclerosis.

At the end of January, Mātai will host a community talk in Gisborne where people can meet Dr Graeme Bydder (an early pioneer of MRI) and his son Dr Mark Bydder, who will talk about the implications of the research.

The journal paper on the findings can be found at: https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nbm.70165