{"id":22618,"date":"2025-09-24T12:28:56","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T16:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.arsacs.com\/?p=22618"},"modified":"2026-03-16T18:18:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T22:18:06","slug":"advanced-mri-studies-to-achieve-microstructural-insight-and-identifyimaging-biomarkers-in-arsacs-by-dr-roberta-lapiana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/advanced-mri-studies-to-achieve-microstructural-insight-and-identifyimaging-biomarkers-in-arsacs-by-dr-roberta-lapiana\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Advanced MRI studies to achieve microstructural insight and identify imaging biomarkers in ARSACS &#8221; &#8211; Dr. Roberta LaPiana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>The involvement of the corticospinal tracts (CST) and cerebellum are the disease hallmarks of ARSACS. Previous radiological studies documented the presence of specific findings which were described as&nbsp;<strong>linear hypointensities in T2-weighted images at the level of the pons<\/strong>.This finding has become very suggestive of ARSACS when seen in brain MRIs; however, its significance is still unclear, with some studies proposing that it could be due to abnormal developmental of the brain.We aim to use&nbsp;<strong>advanced Magnetic Resonance (MR) techniques<\/strong>&nbsp;that combine diffusion and magnetization transfer imaging to&nbsp;<strong>clarify the properties of the corticospinal tract<\/strong>&nbsp;in individuals with ARSACS and thus clarify the meaning of the pontine findings.Additionally, we aim to&nbsp;<strong>confirm<\/strong>&nbsp;the presence of similar findings in the&nbsp;<strong><em>SACS<\/em>-mutant mouse model<\/strong>, to verify its usefulness as a&nbsp;<strong>pre-clinical model<\/strong>&nbsp;for future therapeutic options.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"PANormalLevelIA\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Grant: $95,420<\/p>\n<p><strong>This project has been jointly funded with the Richardson Trust Fund who made a 50 000$ contribution.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Duration : one year<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile\" style=\"grid-template-columns:17% auto\"><figure class=\"wp-block-media-text__media\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Roberta-La-Piana-28-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-22638 size-full\" srcset=\"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Roberta-La-Piana-28-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Roberta-La-Piana-28-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Roberta-La-Piana-28-768x1151.jpg 768w, https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Roberta-La-Piana-28-scaled.jpg 924w, https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Roberta-La-Piana-28-480x719.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\" \/><\/figure><div class=\"wp-block-media-text__content\">\n<p>Dr. Roberta La Piana<br>Montreal Neurological Institute<br>3801 rue University<br>H3A 2B4 Montreal, QC<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Contact:<a href=\"mailto:roberta.lapiana@mcgill.ca\">roberta.lapiana@mcgill.ca<\/a><br>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The involvement of the corticospinal tracts (CST) and cerebellum are the disease hallmarks of ARSACS. Previous radiological studies documented the presence of specific findings which were described as&nbsp;linear hypointensities in T2-weighted images at the level of the pons.This finding has become very suggestive of ARSACS when seen in brain MRIs; however, its significance is still [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22618"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25119,"href":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22618\/revisions\/25119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2026.arsacs.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}