Swiss scientists develop breakthrough neuroimaging technique

A team of researchers from EPFL and the University of Geneva has developed a new medical imaging technique that could help with the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. Since functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) came into widespread use in the 1990s, doctors have been able to identify patterns of neural activity by measuring blood flow […]

A team of researchers from EPFL and the University of Geneva has developed a new medical imaging technique that could help with the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.

Since functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) came into widespread use in the 1990s, doctors have been able to identify patterns of neural activity by measuring blood flow to different regions of the brain. But this process has its flaws. Thanks to a complex computational method, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE) were able to clean up the imperfect signals obtained from fMRI and get a precise and dynamic picture of up to 13 distinct neural networks.

The research, which received support from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Bertarelli Foundation and the Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM), was published in Nature Communications. According to an EPFL press release, it provides new insights into how the brain organizes itself, and sets the stage for early diagnosis of neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s, in which neural networks start to break down at a stage when clinical symptoms are undetectable or negligible. Early diagnosis means early treatment and increased chances of a good outcome.