DIAL

The Neurodiagnostics Laboratory is no more and no new posts will be published. Some work is continued by former members of the team. Check out Jun-Prof. Hanna Zimmermann's group at ECRC (Applied Retina Research), Jun-Prof. Frederike Oertel's group at ECRC (Translational Neuroimmunology) and Prof. Paul's Clinical Neuroimmunology Group at ECRC (Translational Neuroimaging) (https://www.mdc-berlin.de/ecrc). Alexander Brandt is now working for Eli Lilly at the Institute for Genetic Medicines in Boston, MA.

DIAL in Chiba, Tokyo and Sendai

We are happy to announce that the startup Motognosis, which originated from the Neurodiagnostics Labs, was selected for the BIH Digital Health program as part of the new BIH and Startupbootcamp collaboration.

Motognosis has already moved into the Startupbootcamp in Berlin Mitte and is now business coached over the next few months.

Find out more on our website:

Motognosis was selected for the BIH Digital Health program – Neurodiagnostics Laboratory Motognosis was selected for the BIH Digital Health program Posted on October 1, 2017October 1, 2017 by Alexander Brandt We are happy to announce that the startup Motognosis, which originated from the Neurodiagnostics Labs, was selected for the BIH Digital Health program as part of the new BIH and St...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) allows three-dimensional (3D) imaging of the retina, and is commonly used for assessing pathological changes of fovea and macula in many diseases. Many neuroinflammatory conditions are known to cause modifications to the fovea shape. In this paper, we propose a method for parametric modeling of the foveal shape. Our method exploits invariant features of the macula from OCT data and applies a cubic Bézier polynomial along with a least square optimization to produce a best fit parametric model of the fovea. Additionally, we provide several parameters of the foveal shape based on the proposed 3D parametric modeling. Our quantitative and visual results show that the proposed model is not only able to reconstruct important features from the foveal shape, but also produces less error compared to the state-of-the-art methods. Finally, we apply the model in a comparison of healthy control eyes and eyes from patients with neuroinflammatory central nervous system disorders and optic neuritis, and show that several derived model parameters show significant differences between the two groups.

Read more of this just published paper by Sunil Yadav et al. under the link.

Biomedical Optics Express Vol. 8, Issue 9, pp. 4181-4199 (2017)

Can you detect multiple fluorophores with a limited number of light sources? Yes you can! In this exciting work by Dr. Niesner's group, in which we were happy to participate, we used triple two-photon excitation with spatiotemporal synchronization of two femtosecond lasers to achieve just this.

Synergistic Strategy for Multicolor Two-photon Microscopy: Application to the Analysis of Germinal Center Reactions In Vivo Simultaneous detection of multiple cellular and molecular players in their native environment, one of the keys to a full understanding of immune processes, remains challenging for in vivo microscopy. Here, we present a synergistic strategy for spectrally multiplexed in vivo imaging composed of (i) t...

In this work from our lab, Sebastian Papazoglou et al. have developed a normalization method for routine MRI, which greatly decreases COV between subjects. Using this approach we were able to detect white matter gender difference using only a very small sample size, which have been previously shown with DTI in a much larger cohort. We are now looking into how this method can be applied to detect tissue changes in neuroinflammatory diseases.

Single‐subject independent component analysis‐based intensity normalization in non‐quantitative multi‐modal structural MRI Non‐quantitative MRI is prone to intersubject intensity variation rendering signal intensity level based analyses limited. Here, we propose a method that fuses non‐quantitative routine T1‐weighted (T1w),...

In this comprehensive review we look at the utility of OCT in MS.

Monitoring the Course of MS With Optical Coherence Tomography Retinae of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), as part of the central nervous system (CNS), display inflammatory and neurodegenerative changes. There is increasing evidence suggesting that retinal

Ok, here is a selection of papers we have published in the meantime. This one is really important, because it makes it highly certain that there are non relapse-associated changes in NMOSD thereby challenging the notion that damage in NMOSD is only caused during relapses.

Microstructural visual system changes in AQP4-antibody–seropositive NMOSD To trace microstructural changes in patients with aquaporin-4 antibody (AQP4-ab)-seropositive neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders (NMOSDs) by investigating the afferent visual system in patients without clinically overt visual symptoms or visual pathway ...

Have I really not updated this page since January? There goes my New Year's resolution to post more regularly.

As neuroimmunologists and clinical scientists we need to make sure that our assessment of a patient's symptoms reflects daily life difficulties and the disease's impact on quality of life.

In this just published study by Krüger & Behrens et al. we investigate differences in daily activity of patients with multiple sclerosis and their influence on quality of life.

Subjective and objective assessment of physical activity in multiple sclerosis and their relation to health-related quality of life Physical activity (PA) is frequently restricted in people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) and aiming to enhance PA is considered beneficial in this population. We here aimed to explore two standard methods (subjective plus objective) to assess PA reduction in PwMS and to describe the relation of PA t...

Looking at immune processes in the retina can be a powerful tool in understanding autoimmune neuroinflammatory disorders like multiple sclerosis and neuromyelitis optica.

Together with Dr. Niesner's group a the German Rheumatology Research Center and an industry consortium we have developed a multiphoton microscopy prototype for repeated intravital imaging of retinal processes in animal models of these diseases.

The paper by Bremer et al. was just published in Frontiers in Immunology. We are exicted and are looking forward using the system in our ongoing research! Check it out!

Longitudinal Intravital Imaging of the Retina Reveals Long-term Dynamics of Immune Infiltration and Its Effects on the Glial Network in Experimental Autoimmune Uveoretinitis, without Evident Signs of Neuronal Dysfunction in the Ganglion Cell Layer A hallmark of autoimmune retinal inflammation is the infiltration of the retina with cells of the innate and adaptive immune system, leading to detachment of the retinal layers and even to complete loss of the retinal photoreceptor layer. As the only optical system in the organism, the eye enables n...

Together with our startup Motognosis we tested Kinect 2 based motion analysis against a full-fledged, marker based motion laboratory with professional 3D cameras. The results were very promising that consumer-grade RGBD cameras can achieve medical grade diagnostics quality.

Accuracy and Reliability of the Kinect Version 2 for Clinical Measurement of Motor Function. - PubMed - NCBI PLoS One. 2016 Nov 18;11(11):e0166532. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0166532. eCollection 2016.