Ivan I. Kirov, PhD

In the clinic, neurologists often encounter patients whose symptoms are not explained by an MRI exam. Such discordance between clinical and radiological findings is explained by the fact that a routine MRI does not reflect all aspects of brain health. For example, tissue that looks normal on MRI can have chemical imbalances that can be responsible for current symptoms or future disease. One way to image such biochemical or metabolic changes is a technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). My research focuses on the use of MRS in neurological disorders, particularly in concussion and traumatic brain injury (TBI) and multiple sclerosis (MS).

My work is done through departmental, institutional, and international collaborations with physicians, physicists, and other scientists, and currently includes the following four areas of investigation:

• My main current project, funded by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grant, is entitled Quantitative Sodium MR Imaging and Proton MR Spectroscopy in Traumatic Brain Injury and is headed by me and my NYU Langone colleague Guillaume Madelin, PhD, as co-principal investigators. The goal is to investigate the use of multimodal MRI and MRS to predict long-term TBI outcomes.
• As part of an NYU Langone team, I am involved in a multisite study of the effects of repetitive TBI in athletes. The NIH-funded project, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: Detection, Diagnosis, Course, and Risk Factors, is led by Boston University and aims to develop methods for early detection and diagnosis of neurodegenerative pathology associated in part with repetitive TBI.
• In my research on MS, my goal has been to characterize the temporal evolution of the metabolic changes occurring in early disease (within approximately five years of onset). This work is done in collaboration with my NYU Langone colleague Oded Gonen, PhD.
• Through a grant awarded by NYU Langone’s Alzheimer’s Disease Center, I study preclinical Alzheimer's disease, in order to identify novel MRS markers and approaches that can ultimately be used to improve the utility of the imaging technique in the prediction and management of the disease.