Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Water-Fat Magnetic Resonance Imaging For The Assessment Of Human Fetal Adipose Tissue, Stephanie A. Giza

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Adipose tissue is crucial for providing heat and energy to infants, especially at transitions such as birth and therefore must begin developing in utero. This development may be altered due to an adverse uterine environment, increasing the risk of developing later-life metabolic diseases such as obesity. An early assessment of fetal adipose tissue development through lipid accumulation could be key to understanding metabolic programming and minimizing this risk.

Water-fat magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can non-invasively measure the lipid concentration of tissues and can therefore monitor the development of adipose tissue via tissue lipid concentration. This work demonstrated the feasibility …

Predicting Brain Metastasis Response To Stereotactic Radiosurgery Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging Radiomics And Machine Learning, David A. Devries

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Brain metastases (BMs) represent advanced cancer, and so BM patients must be treated quickly and effectively while minimizing treatment toxicities. Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) uses conformal, ablative radiation doses to treat BMs, but with failure rates up to 30%. A predictive model of BM progression post-SRS would therefore aid in BM treatment selection and SRS planning. Previous studies have used pre-treatment T1-weighted contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (T1w-CE MRI) to predict SRS outcomes, through quantitative radiomic analysis with machine learning (ML) and qualitative appearance analysis. Comparison of these methods is not well understood, and ML methods have not been studied for sensitivity …

In Utero Magnetic Resonance Relaxometry For Fetal Tissue Development, Simran Sethi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Fetal life is a significant period of human development because organ systems that sustain life outside the uterus begin to develop during this time. A necessary process that begins during fetal life is myelination, which is the process by which myelin, a lipid-rich substance, is wrapped around neurons in the brain to increase the speed of action potential transmission. Since myelination is critical for the normal function of the central nervous system, fetal myelin assessment is important for understanding neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration, such as intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR).

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an excellent tool for visualizing fetal anatomy …

Advancing Non-Invasive Imaging Techniques For Tracking Cellular Therapeutics In Vivo, Olivia C. Sehl

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cell therapies, including mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) and regulatory T cells (Tregs) have shown potent and long-lasting therapeutic benefit in several disease applications. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of these therapies is variable and following administration, it is largely unknown where therapeutic cells traffic and how many persist over time. This thesis aims to advance and compare iron- and fluorine-19 (¹⁹F)-based magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic particle imaging (MPI) for therapeutic cell tracking.

First, we developed a trimodal imaging approach to study MSC fate in vivo. In a mouse model, iron-labeled MSC were detected by MRI and MPI, …