The research group MR Physics at the DZNE-Bonn investigates novel MR methods for imaging biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases. The early detection of neurodegenerative diseases using medical imaging techniques is a challenging and still unsolved task. Nevertheless, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the method of choice due to its inherently multi-modal character: MRI exploits many different biophysical and biochemical properties and provides quantitative information for brain tissue characterization. Furthermore, the noninvasive nature of MRI offers a great opportunity to perform large-scale longitudinal studies in patient groups as well as in healthy volunteers. However, it is very difficult to detect small changes in brain tissue, as they occur in neurodegeneration.

Our main focus is the MRI sequence development on a new state-of-the-art 7 Tesla human MRI scanner, allowing the manifestations of neurodegeneration to be probed with high sensitivity and resolution. The higher sensitivity of ultra-high magnetic field MRI brings the opportunity to detect subtle changes in brain function, structure, and metabolism as known to be present in early stages of neurodegenerative diseases. The accompanied challenges of ultra-high field MRI are an active and important area of basic physics research.