Tomas
Vikner

Dr. Vikner completed his M.S. in Engineering Physics in 2018 and has since the focused on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of intracranial blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow dynamics in relation to aging, cerebral small vessel disease (SVD), neurodegeneration, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and related dementias. During his Ph.D. at Umeå University (Sweden) and postdoctoral training at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he developed MRI tools to study blood and CSF flow, mostly using a dynamic, velocity-sensitive phase contrast MRI technique with volumetric coverage, commonly referred to as 4D-Flow MRI, as well as contrast enhanced MRI. His current work focuses on the development of acquisition, reconstruction, and analysis strategies to facilitate imaging of blood CSF flow dynamics at various velocity scales, using both clinical MRI systems as well as a high-performance head-only MRI gradients. Through his work, he aims to provide new CSF flow metrics of potential relevance to AD and CSF-mediated waste clearance from the brain. In addition, he aims to better understand whether altered neurofluid flow dynamics, as typically observed in aging and AD, is mainly a downstream effect of protein accumulation and neurodegeneration, or whether changes in neurofluid flow dynamics could reflect an early mechanism in the pathophysiology of AD.