Cambridge 7T Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Study (CamSVD)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Imaging the arterial pathology in cerebral small vessel disease using 7 Tesla MRI.
IRAS ID
258335
Contact name
Hugh Markus
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and University of Cambridge
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Disease of small blood vessels in the brain, which we call cerebral small vessel disease (SVD), causes a quarter of all strokes and is the most common cause of vascular dementia.
Currently, there are no available treatments specific for SVD. A major obstacle to developing new treatments is because we have an incomplete understanding of what causes the disease. If we could understand the disease mechanisms better, we could develop more effective treatment approaches.
One particular area that we do not fully understand is what are the abnormalities that occur in the blood vessels themselves, and do different types of abnormalities occur in different SVD patients. Recently it has become possible to visualise the small blood vessels (perforating arteries) in the brain in man using MRI. This is by using 7 Tesla (7T) MRI which has a very strong magnet. Such a system has recently been installed at Addenbrooke’s hospital. We have shown this allows us to see the individual perforating arteries in man.
We will use this 7T MRI system to answer the following questions:
1) What abnormalities are present in the small blood vessels of patients with stroke due to SVD, for example does narrowing of the blood vessels occur?
2) In patients with stroke due to SVD (which we call lacunar stroke) does the stroke occur due to blockage of one of the small blood vessels due to a blood clot?
REC name
East of England - Cambridge Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/EE/0219
Date of REC Opinion
14 Aug 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion