A $3.2 million, five-year R01 renewal grant from the National Institutes of Health will further advance the work being done by researchers from Duke Neurosurgery and Cleveland Clinic in the clinical application of magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) in epilepsy.
The goal is to use MRF to improve presurgical imaging—and ultimately surgical planning and outcome predictions—for drug-resistant focal epilepsy, compared to standard MRI.
“This renewal marks an exciting milestone and reflects the progress we've made in advancing MR imaging technology," said Dan Ma, PhD, associate professor of neurosurgery. “This grant will support our work over the next five years, and I'm especially excited to expand and integrate this research at Duke.”
So far, the work has advanced MR imaging from development to clinical use, shifting its role from detecting lesions to more precisely identifying seizure onset areas to guide treatment decisions.
MRF delivers a whole-brain quantitative MR scan that is being used in a wide range of neuroimaging studies including epilepsy, brain tumors, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, infants with prenatal opioid exposure, and elderly patients with normal pressure hydrocephalus.
Ma’s lab developed the foundational MRF technology and later optimized it with Microsoft’s Quantum Team.
“With this renewal, we continue our efforts to improve outcomes for epilepsy patients,” Ma said.
The grant will allow for shifting toward using the MRF technology for precision guidance with the goal of using fewer exams and less invasive procedures and improving seizure-free outcomes.
Ma joined the Duke Neurosurgery faculty in January 2025. She is the project’s principal investigator at Duke.