Cerebral Microbleeds : a marker of vascular brain disease

The aim of this thesis is to expand our current knowledge on microbleeds as a marker of vascular and neurodegenerative brain disease. To this end microbleeds were correlated with other established markers of small vessel disease –cerebral or systemic- to investigate whether microbleeds represent active and diffuse vasculopathy. Furthermore, I aimed to determine whether microbleeds yield clinical relevance by investigating their relation to development of overt neurological diseases such as stroke and dementia.

All studies were conducted within the Rotterdam Study, a large population-based cohort that uses neuroimaging techniques to investigate occurrence, determinants, and consequences of chronic diseases in an aging population.