# Clinically feasible functional MRI providing independent assessments of cerebrovascular stiffness and microcirculation in typical aging and Alzheimer's Disease cohorts

> **NIH NIH F30** · PURDUE UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $53,974

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia worldwide currently affecting over 50 million people.
The pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s dementia is complex and multifactorial, however, decreases in
cerebrovascular function have been linked to disease progression. Despite the role vascular health plays in the
prognosis of AD, the ability to assess intracranial vascular integrity is limited. There is a critical need to assess
vascular properties sensitive to microvascular function and arterial stiffness to understand why and how vascular
health is a substantial risk factor for AD dementia. The right tool will be able to assess multiple cerebrovascular
health metrics and monitor potential interventions targeting the vascular system in the treatment of AD dementia.
This study aims to utilize a conventional resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) scan to assess arterial stiffness
and microvascular health through the development and implementation of specialized image processing
techniques. These metrics will be applied to two large datasets available from the Human Connectome Project
(HCP) – Aging and the Indiana Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (IADRC). Using the HCP dataset, we will
assess vascular changes in a typically aging sample (aims 1 & 2). With the IADRC dataset, we will assess the
associations of cerebrovascular health with cognitive function across a spectrum of cognitive impairment (aim
3). The central hypothesis is that measures sensitive to arterial stiffness and microvascular function
derived from specialized rs-fMRI image processing will significantly correlate with typical aging and
cognitive impairment in the spectrum of AD pathology. The central hypothesis will be tested with the
following aims:
 Aim 1: Assess the correlation of cerebral artery stiffness and age using rs-fMRI-derived arterial pulse
 propagation mapping.
 Aim 2: Evaluate rs-fMRI-derived cerebral transit time (CTT) in the HCP-aging dataset.
 Aim 3: Determine whether rs-fMRI-derived arterial stiffness and CTT in the AD-spectrum are significantly
 associated with cognitive impairment.
The measures of arterial stiffness and microvascular function will provide greater insight into the influence of
vascular health on AD dementia and may be used in the future to monitor intervention status. The entire pipeline
with detailed demo code developed in this project will be openly shared to allow other researchers to extract
these vascular metrics from standard rs-fMRI data and study other pathologies with known cerebrovascular
involvement, resulting in a high clinical impact.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10915451
- **Project number:** 5F30AG084336-02
- **Recipient organization:** PURDUE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Adam M Wright
- **Activity code:** F30 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $53,974
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-08-14 → 2027-08-13

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10915451

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10915451, Clinically feasible functional MRI providing independent assessments of cerebrovascular stiffness and microcirculation in typical aging and Alzheimer's Disease cohorts (5F30AG084336-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10915451. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*