Areas of work · 01

Multiple sclerosis

MS subtypes and stages from MRI and blood biomarkers, found with SuStaIn.

Brain maps for three MS subtypes, cortex-led, normal-appearing white matter-led and lesion-led, each shown over five stages
Three MRI subtypes of MS, each shown from early (top) to late stage (bottom). Eshaghi et al., Nature Communications 2021.

The team behind QSA has analysed MRI from MS trials at UCL for three decades: new and enlarging lesions, brain atrophy, magnetisation transfer, diffusion and slowly expanding lesions.

Relapsing and progressive are clinical labels. With SuStaIn (Subtype and Stage Inference), MRI alone separates MS into three subtypes by where damage appears first: the cortex, normal-appearing white matter or lesions (Eshaghi et al., Nature Communications 2021). Adding serum neurofilament light chain, Willard et al. (Brain 2025) found two biological types of MS. Every patient also gets a stage, which a trial can use for enrichment or stratification.

Planning a neurology trial?

Tell us about your study and the imaging questions behind it.

Send us a message