Evaluation and treatment for a full range of movement disorders is offered, among them Parkinson's disease and related diseases (including progressive supranuclear palsy and multiple system atrophy), essential tremor, other tremor disorders, dystonia, restless legs syndrome, Tourette's, Huntington disease, hyperkinetic movement disorders, Wilson's disease and spinocerebellar ataxias. Management of Parkinson's disease includes access to clinical trials as well as the latest approved medications and neurosurgical approaches. For movement disorders, we offer and multidisciplinary evaluations including physical therapy, speech and swallowing therapy, psychiatry, and occupational therapy. Botulinum toxin (Botox, Xeomin, Dysport, and Myobloc) therapy for cervical dystonia and other movement disorders are performed with electromyographic (EMG) guidance. Evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of unusual movement disorders including calcifications of the brain, stiff person syndrome, and painful legs/moving toes is supplemented by access to research in these areas. Peter LeWitt M.D. is the department's specialist in this field and Michal Halon, MD is the Movement Disorders fellow.
THE MR CORE RESEARCH FACILITY AND NEUROIMAGING TEAM
Dr. Chen is Director of the MRRF. His research focuses on developing novel quantitative MRI methods of the brain and the peripheral nerves. His clinical research interests include neurodegenerative disease (e.g. Parkinson’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis) and peripheral neuropathies. Relevant to movement disorders, he has been focusing on developing multiparametric quantitative MRI methods to optimize the image contrast of the substantia nigra and the locus coeruleus, and to quantify the neuromelanin loss as well as iron deposition in these territories. With these technical developments and in collaboration with his colleagues, Dr. Chen has been working on developing imaging biomarkers for the diagnosis of early Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders.
Sagar Buch, PhD Assistant Professor of Neurology Publications
Dr. Buch has expertise in MRI physics, angiography/venography approaches and technical development for quantitative neuroimaging algorithms. He has worked on projects involved with localization of the deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrodes and their targets using different imaging modalities. DBS is a widely performed surgical procedure for patients with medically refractory movement disorders. Currently, he is working towards creating an in vivo microvascular print of the human brain; including the midbrain and its structures, which play a pivotal role in coordinating smooth movements. He has developed international collaborations by implementing his technique at different research sites for mapping the microvasculature abnormalities in PD patients. These results will be essential in understanding the relatively under-researched vascular component of movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.
Ewart Haacke, PhD co-Director of the MRRF Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering Wayne State University Publications ,
Dr. E. Mark Haacke, PhD, is co-Director of the MRRF. He is Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering at Wayne State University, a Professor of Radiology at Loma Linda University in California, and a Professor of Physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Prof. Haacke was the president of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine in 1994, and was awarded the 2004 Gold Medal of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine in Kyoto, Japan. Throughout his 40 years of experience in MRI, he has trained many people in MRI (more than 150 students, post-doctoral fellows, engineers, clinical fellows and research fellows) many of whom have become senior faculty and run their own research laboratories. He has published nearly 500 papers with greater than 45,000 citations and an h-factor of 100. His main interests in research are MR angiography, the role of iron in neurodegenerative diseases, fast imaging, and image reconstruction. He has recently developed a rapid approach to neuroimaging called STAGE in an attempt to open the door to standardized neuroimaging.
