Edinburgh Imaging

25 May 17. Dunhill Medical invests in us

The Dunhill Medical Trust's £300,000 grant assisted in us purchasing the Siemens Magnetom Prisma scanner.

New state-of-the-art 3T MR scanner

We are delighted that the new MRI scanner  that was installed in our Edinburgh Imaging Facility RIE, has now been successfully scanning both patients and volunteers for the last 6 months.

This enables us to do advanced neuroimaging, in order to understand the causes of stroke and dementia, and develop effective preventions.

Neuroimaging research

Some of the areas of research that will use the new scanner for advanced MR brain imaging are:

  1. Cerebral microvascular disease, which causes up to 45% of dementias and 20% of strokes. The research focuses on causes of microvascular and brain damage, risk factors across the life-course and developing treatments and running clinical trials.
  2. Delirium, which affects 15% of hospital-admitted patients aged over 65 years of age and increases dementia risk, but is poorly understood. The research will address the role of brain microvessel damage and how delirium increases the risk of dementia.
  3. Brain haemorrhage, which is a common cause of disability or death in older people, commonly related to amyloid angiopathy and associated with dementia. The research will address causes and risk factors for arteriolar damage and prevention.
  4. Resilience in cognitive ageing, which is part of several studies including the 1000-strong Lothian Birth Cohort 1936. Research links imaging-detected brain and microvascular damage to life course effects on cognition.

Further studies

Edinburgh Imaging and the University of Edinburgh's Neuroimaging Sciences team are currently working on four research projects, with another five studies to be set up.