Mesostriatal Dopaminergic Circuit Dysfunction in Schizophrenia: A Multimodal Neuromelanin-Sensitive Magnetic Resonance Imaging and [F]-DOPA Positron Emission Tomography Study.

Background: Striatal hyperdopaminergia is implicated in the pathoetiology of schizophrenia, but how this relates to dopaminergic midbrain activity is unclear. Neuromelanin (NM)-sensitive magnetic resonance imaging provides a marker of long-term dopamine function. We examined whether midbrain NM-sensitive magnetic resonance imaging contrast-to-noise ratio (NM-CNR) was higher in people with schizophrenia than in healthy control (HC) participants and whether this correlated with dopamine synthesis capacity.

Repeat it without me: Crowdsourcing the T mapping common ground via the ISMRM reproducibility challenge.

Purpose: T mapping is a widely used quantitative MRI technique, but its tissue-specific values remain inconsistent across protocols, sites, and vendors. The ISMRM Reproducible Research and Quantitative MR study groups jointly launched a challenge to assess the reproducibility of a well-established inversion-recovery T mapping technique, using acquisition details from a seminal T mapping paper on a standardized phantom and in human brains.

Methods: The challenge used the acquisition protocol from Barral et al.

Steps on the Path to Clinical Translation: A workshop by the British and Irish Chapter of the ISMRM.

The British and Irish Chapter of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (BIC-ISMRM) held a workshop entitled "Steps on the path to clinical translation" in Cardiff, UK, on 7th September 2022. The aim of the workshop was to promote discussion within the MR community about the problems and potential solutions for translating quantitative MR (qMR) imaging and spectroscopic biomarkers into clinical application and drug studies. Invited speakers presented the perspectives of radiologists, radiographers, clinical physicists, vendors, imaging Contract/Clinical Research Organizations (CROs), open science networks, metrologists, imaging networks, and those developing consensus methods.

The acute effects of cannabidiol on emotional processing and anxiety: a neurocognitive imaging study.

Rationale: There is growing interest in the therapeutic potential of cannabidiol (CBD) across a range of psychiatric disorders. CBD has been found to reduce anxiety during experimentally induced stress in anxious individuals and healthy controls. However, the mechanisms underlying the putative anxiolytic effects of CBD are unknown.

Adipose tissue dysfunction, inflammation, and insulin resistance: alternative pathways to cardiac remodelling in schizophrenia. A multimodal, case-control study.

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia show evidence of concentric cardiac remodelling (CCR), defined as an increase in left-ventricular mass over end-diastolic volumes. CCR is a predictor of cardiac disease, but the molecular pathways leading to this in schizophrenia are unknown.

Temperature dependence, accuracy, and repeatability of T and T relaxation times for the ISMRM/NIST system phantom measured using MR fingerprinting.

Purpose: Before MR fingerprinting (MRF) can be adopted clinically, the derived quantitative values must be proven accurate and repeatable over a range of T and T values and temperatures. Correct assessment of accuracy and precision as well as comparison between measurements can only be performed when temperature is either controlled or corrected for. The purpose of this study was to investigate the temperature dependence of T and T MRF values and evaluate the accuracy and repeatability of temperature-corrected relaxation values derived from a B -corrected MRF-fast imaging with steady-state precession implementation using 2 different dictionary sizes.

Phenotypic Expression and Outcomes in Individuals With Rare Genetic Variants of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.

Background: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is caused by rare variants in sarcomere-encoding genes, but little is known about the clinical significance of these variants in the general population.

Objectives: The goal of this study was to compare lifetime outcomes and cardiovascular phenotypes according to the presence of rare variants in sarcomere-encoding genes among middle-aged adults.

Methods: This study analyzed whole exome sequencing and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging in UK Biobank participants stratified according to sarcomere-encoding variant status.

The relationship between synaptic density marker SV2A, glutamate and N-acetyl aspartate levels in healthy volunteers and schizophrenia: a multimodal PET and magnetic resonance spectroscopy brain imaging study.

Glutamatergic excitotoxicity is hypothesised to underlie synaptic loss in schizophrenia pathogenesis, but it is unknown whether synaptic markers are related to glutamatergic function in vivo. Additionally, it has been proposed that N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) levels reflect neuronal integrity. Here, we investigated whether synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2 A (SV2A) levels are related to glutamatergic markers and NAA in healthy volunteers (HV) and schizophrenia patients (SCZ).

Systematic large-scale assessment of the genetic architecture of left ventricular noncompaction reveals diverse etiologies.

Purpose: To characterize the genetic architecture of left ventricular noncompaction (LVNC) and investigate the extent to which it may represent a distinct pathology or a secondary phenotype associated with other cardiac diseases.

Methods: We performed rare variant association analysis with 840 LVNC cases and 125,748 gnomAD population controls, and compared results to similar analyses on dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).

Results: We observed substantial genetic overlap indicating that LVNC often represents a phenotypic variation of DCM or HCM.

Cardiac structure and function in schizophrenia: cardiac magnetic resonance imaging study.

Background: Heart disease is the leading cause of death in schizophrenia. However, there has been little research directly examining cardiac function in schizophrenia.

Aims: To investigate cardiac structure and function in individuals with schizophrenia using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) after excluding medical and metabolic comorbidity.

Noninvasive Mapping of the Electrophysiological Substrate in Cardiac Amyloidosis and Its Relationship to Structural Abnormalities.

Background The relationship between structural pathology and electrophysiological substrate in cardiac amyloidosis is unclear. Differences between light-chain (AL) and transthyretin (ATTR) cardiac amyloidosis may have prognostic implications. Methods and Results ECG imaging and cardiac magnetic resonance studies were conducted in 21 cardiac amyloidosis patients (11 AL and 10 ATTR).

Cardiac structure and function in patients with schizophrenia taking antipsychotic drugs: an MRI study.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major cause of excess mortality in schizophrenia. Preclinical evidence shows antipsychotics can cause myocardial fibrosis and myocardial inflammation in murine models, but it is not known if this is the case in patients. We therefore set out to determine if there is evidence of cardiac fibrosis and/or inflammation using cardiac MRI in medicated patients with schizophrenia compared with matched healthy controls.

Motion-corrected multiparametric renal arterial spin labelling at 3 T: reproducibility and effect of vasodilator challenge.

Objectives: We investigated the feasibility and reproducibility of free-breathing motion-corrected multiple inversion time (multi-TI) pulsed renal arterial spin labelling (PASL), with general kinetic model parametric mapping, to simultaneously quantify renal perfusion (RBF), bolus arrival time (BAT) and tissue T.

Methods: In a study approved by the Health Research Authority, 12 healthy volunteers (mean age, 27.6 ± 18.