23 Apr 19. Investigate@SVDs final volunteer

Well done to the recruitment team, led by Dr Gordon Blair,  who has now successfully completed  recruitment; welcoming the final Edinburgh participant for this study, to Edinburgh Imaging Facility RIE today. 

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What is Small Vessel Disease (SVD)

Small vessel disease (SVD) is characterised by damage to deep grey and white matter structures of the brain, causing a fifth of all strokes and up to half of all cases of dementia amongst a range of other medical problems.

Fortunately advances in neuroimaging, mainly with MRI, are improving quantification, observation and investigation of SVD -  focussing on three areas:

1. quantifying the total SVD burden

2. imaging brain microstructural integrity

3. imaging vascular malfunction

The Investigate-SVDs study uses the advanced capabilities of the Edinburgh Imaging Facility RIE's brain optimised research MRI scanner (Siemens Magnetom Prisma 3T) to understand how changes in the way the brain's smallest blood vessels work can lead to disease.

It is specifically investigating how leakey the blood vessels in the brain are and how well they increase in size to deliver more blood when it is needed. This knowledge will help us develop and find new treatments for cerebral small vessel disease which leads to stroke and dementia.

Collaborative partners

The study is being performed in collaboration with researchers in Munich, Maastricht, Utrecht and Oxford as part of the larger SVDs@Target project which includes a range of laboratory studies in addition to three multi-centre clinical studies.

The project is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme (project number 666881).