BME PhD Defense Announcement for Adam Wright (Y. Tong, advisor) Everyone is invited to attend the public presentation beginning at 1:00 PM. Title: MRI Techniques to investigate cerebral neurofluid dynamics across aging and disease. Date: Tuesday December 16th, 2025 Time: 1:00 PM Location: MJIS 2001 and Zoom Meeting link: https://purdue-edu.zoom.us/j/9302687285?pwd=MUF1WDludmxQMzYwdkVUNWFWakhNQT09<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpurdue-edu.zoom.us%2Fj%2F9302687285%3Fpwd%3DMUF1WDludmxQMzYwdkVUNWFWakhNQT09&data=05%7C02%7Cbmeroundtable-list%40ecn.purdue.edu%7Ccd2e7605a3294f7f525608de31c2a39a%7C4130bd397c53419cb1e58758d6d63f21%7C1%7C0%7C639002909184871880%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=vw%2FsJ%2B%2B%2BhHFZeDZQ0Ci4BKBpB7%2Fo63z1se3cKbu8C2g%3D&reserved=0> Meeting ID: 930 268 7285 Passcode: kk1The Committee: Yunjie Tong (Chair) Qiuting Wen Igor Fernandes Vitaliy Rayz Abstract: The brain is a remarkable organ, constantly engaged in maintenance to support our everyday thoughts, actions, and experiences. Proper function depends on continuous nutrient delivery and waste clearance, which is sustained by a delicate balance of arterial blood delivery, venous return, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) movement. These neurofluid dynamics are tightly coupled to cardiac pulsations; however, the high frequency of the heart rate makes them difficult to capture with standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This dissertation develops and validates multiple MRI techniques to capture cardiac-driven neurofluid dynamics, providing important insights into cerebral physiology despite slower imaging speeds. Although functional MRI (fMRI) is traditionally used to study neuronal activity, the techniques developed here demonstrate that it also contains rich physiological information relevant to neurofluid dynamics, that can be leveraged to: 1) quantify the coupling between vascular and perivascular fluid dynamics, 2) recover cardiac pulsations in scans where these signals would otherwise be corrupted, and 3) measure the cardiac pulse propagation from arteries to veins. These tools provide new insights into brain waste clearance mechanisms, vascular hemodynamics, and the intracranial mechanical environment. They were applied to aging populations to characterize typical age-related changes, and the waste clearance mechanisms were subsequently used in an Alzheimer's disease cohort to assess whether impaired clearance is associated with pathological waste accumulation. Collectively, these techniques provide a framework to study brain function and dysfunction in aging and neurological disease. -- Bmeroundtable-list mailing list Bmeroundtable-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bmeroundtable-list