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At least 991 records · Page 55Linked to original sources

A prospective approach to correct for inter-image head rotation in fMRI.

Global head motion occurring between successive image acquisitions during a functional MRI time series can corrupt the signal of physiologic brain activation, potentially invalidating interpretation of the final activation map from that particular fMRI time series. By approximating the head as a rigid body, multiaxial global head motion can be decomposed into orthogonal linear and rotational components. This paper describes a method using orbital navigator echoes to provide prospective correction for both through-plane and in-plane inter-image head rotation in functional MRI. The dynamic detection and correction of rotation can be performed in <100 ms. Phantom experiments demonstrate accurate correction of rotational motion over a range of +/-0.36 degrees to +/-12 degrees. Imaging studies in volunteers document the feasibility of real-time prospective correction of rotational motion in vivo. Using a modified receiver operating characteristic method, motion-corrected functional MRI sensorimotor studies incorporating deliberate head rotations are shown to be superior to functional MRI time series acquired under similar conditions but without motion correction.

Artifacts↗

Single-slice Functional Lung MRI During Metronome-Paced Tachypnea Detects Changes in Regional Ventilation Dynamics After a Single Dose of Dual Bronchodilator Treatment in COPD.

Dual long-acting bronchodilators are a standard treatment in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), aimed at alleviating dyspnea, improving exercise tolerance, and preventing exacerbations. Metronome-paced tachypnea (MPT) offers a feasible alternative to exercise testing for the evaluation of dynamic hyperinflation (DH) in COPD. Because MPT can be performed during MRI, its combination with single-slice phase-resolved functional lung (PREFUL) MRI provides a promising approach to investigate changes in regional ventilation dynamics induced by DH. This approach was evaluated in a randomized, investigator-blinded, placebo-controlled, single-dose (SD) crossover trial with a two-week extension of once daily dual bronchodilator medication, in which patients with stable COPD underwent PREFUL MRI during resting tidal breathing (RTB) and during MPT. During RTB, no significant improvements in MRI-derived parameters were observed after SD treatment compared with placebo. During MPT, however, regional ventilation, flow-volume loop correlation, its defect percentage, and end-expiratory lung area improved significantly after SD treatment compared to the placebo scan (all p&#x2009;<&#x2009;0.02). After multi-dose treatment, five out of six measured parameters improved during MPT, when compared to the baseline scan without bronchodilator treatment (all p&#x2009;<&#x2009;0.03). In contrast to RTB, PREFUL MRI during MPT was able to detect changes in COPD patients already after SD treatment. The combination of MPT and PREFUL MRI represents a promising method to evaluate the effects of dual bronchodilators on regional ventilation dynamics and hyperinflation.

Humans↗

Measurement of the point spread function in MRI using constant time imaging.

The point spread function is a fundamental property of magnetic resonance imaging methods that affects image quality and spatial resolution. The point spread function is difficult to measure precisely in magnetic resonance even with the use of carefully designed phantoms, and it is difficult to calculate this function for complex sequences such as echo-planar imaging. This report describes a method that measures the point spread function with high spatial resolution at each pixel in samples of uniform intensity distribution. This method uses additional phase encoding gradients before the echo-planar acquisition that are constant in length but vary in amplitude. The additional gradients are applied to image the contents within each individual voxel. This method has been used to measure the point spread function for echo-planar imaging to demonstrate the effects of limited k-space sampling and transverse relaxation, as well as the effects of object motion. By considering the displacement of the point spread function, local distortions due to susceptibility and chemical shift effects have been quantified and corrected. The method allows rapid assessment of the point spread function in echo-planar imaging, in vivo, and may also be applied to other rapid imaging sequences that can be modified to include these additional phase encoding gradients.

Brain↗

Blood pressure changes induced by arterial blood withdrawal influence bold signal in anesthesized rats at 7 Tesla: implications for pharmacologic mri.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrast is now increasingly applied for measuring drug effects on brain activity. A possible confound in pharmacologic fMRI (phMRI) is that the BOLD signal may be sensitive to systemic cardiovascular or respiratory parameters, which can themselves be modulated by a drug. To assess whether abrupt changes in arterial blood pressure (BP) as may be observed in phMRI experiments influence the BOLD signal, a hemorrhage model was studied in anesthesized rats at 7 T using spin-echo EPI. BP and BOLD signal time courses were found to be significantly correlated (P < 0.01). This effect was detected under the three different anesthetic regimens employed (isoflurane, halothane, and propofol). The regional pattern of BP-BOLD correlations was heterogeneous and may reflect vascular density. In physiological terms, a BOLD decrease during a decrease in BP may result from an increase in mostly venous cerebral blood volume (CBV) as an autoregulatory response to maintain cerebral blood flow (CBF) during decreased perfusion pressure. The observed influence of BP on BOLD may complicate qualitative and quantitative description of drug effects.

Animals↗

Dopamine antagonist modulation of amphetamine response as detected using pharmacological MRI.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), employing BOLD-contrast, was used to measure changes in regional brain activation following amphetamine administration, either alone or after pre-treatment with the dopamine D1 receptor antagonist SCH23390, or the dopamine D2 receptor antagonist, sulpiride, in anaesthetised rat. After obtaining baseline data, rats (n=8) were given amphetamine (3 g/kg i.v) and volume data sets collected for 90 mins. Acute amphetamine challenge caused widespread increases in BOLD signal intensity in many subcortical structures with rich dopaminergic innervation, with decreases in BOLD contrast observed in the superficial layers of the cortex. Pretreatment with SCH23390 (n=8, 0.5 mg/kg, i.v) substantially attenuated the increases in BOLD activity in response to amphetamine, with lesser effects on the amphetamine-evoked decreases in BOLD signal. In contrast, sulpiride (n=8, 50 mg/kg, i.v) predominantly blocked the decrease in BOLD signal, having a smaller effect on the increases in BOLD signal. In summary, these data are supportive of the notion that different dopamine receptor types are responsible for separate components of the full amphetamine response. Furthermore the utility of BOLD contrast fMRI as a means of characterising the mechanisms of drug action in the whole brain has been demonstrated. Such studies may be of particular use for investigation of localised action and interaction of different dopaminergic agents.

Amphetamine↗

Comparison of FAIR perfusion kinetics with DSC-MRI and functional histology in a model of transient ischemia.

Flow-sensitive alternating inversion recovery (FAIR) is a noninvasive method for perfusion imaging. It has been shown that the FAIR signal may depend on hemodynamic parameters other than perfusion, the most important one being transit delays of labeled spins to the observed tissue. These parameters are expected to change with ischemia. The goal of this study was to assess the effect of these changes on the interpretation of FAIR results in the case of altered perfusion. This was investigated in a rat model of transient cerebral ischemia. It was shown that the ratio of FAIR signal in the infarct compared to the contralateral side was lower at short inflow times, which suggests that transit times affected the effective FAIR signal. The FAIR results were compared with those from functional histology and dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI, and the findings indicated that the altered kinetics of the FAIR signal were related to reduced and delayed inflow in the infarct region--not to a decrease in the number of functional vessels.

Animals↗

Pre-processed image reconstruction applied to breast and brain MR imaging.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has emerged as a powerful tool in medical diagnosis and research. Although high spatial resolution images are essential in medical diagnosis and image analysis, high temporal resolution is equally important in applications of dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI or functional brain MRI. In particular, in breast MRI the ability to differentiate between benign and malignant lesions depends, in part, on the temporal resolution of the dynamic image acquisition. New applications of MRI such as multi-feature analysis of image time series data and full 3D functional MRI or event-related functional MRI require high spatial and high temporal resolution for accurate image analysis on a voxel-by-voxel basis. Currently available partial Fourier reconstruction techniques. which effectively improve the time resolution, suffer from a reduced signal to noise ratio in the reconstructed image, a decrease in spatial resolution or reconstruction artefacts, making numerical image analysis difficult. In this work we present an image reconstruction algorithm based on image recovery theory which effectively doubles the temporal resolution and results in an image quality sufficient for further numerical analysis. The developed algorithm requires a full Fourier space acquisition of a pre-contrast or baseline image prior to the reconstruction procedure of the time series partial Fourier data.

Algorithms↗

A replication study of the neural correlates of deception.

The authors attempted to replicate prior group brain correlates of deception and improve on the consistency of individual results. Healthy, right-handed adults were instructed to tell the truth or to lie while being imaged in a 3T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Blood oxygen level-dependent functional MRI significance maps were generated for subjects giving a deceptive answer minus a truthful answer (lie minus true) and the reverse (true minus lie). The lie minus true group analysis (n = 10) revealed significant activation in 5 regions, consistent with a previous study (right orbitofrontal, inferior frontal, middle frontal cortex, cingulate gyrus, and left middle frontal), with no significant activation for true minus lie. Individual results of the lie minus true condition were variable. Results show that functional MRI is a reasonable tool with which to study deception.

Adolescent↗

Detecting low-frequency functional connectivity in fMRI using a self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm.

Low-frequency oscillations (<0.08 Hz) have been detected in functional MRI studies, and appear to be synchronized between functionally related areas. A current challenge is to detect these patterns without using an external reference. Self-organizing maps (SOMs) offer a way to automatically group data without requiring a user-biased reference function or region of interest. Resting state functional MRI data was classified using a self-organizing map (SOM). Functional connectivity between the left and right motor cortices was detected in five subjects, and was comparable to results from a reference-based approach. SOMs are shown to be an attractive option in detecting functional connectivity using a model-free approach. Hum. Brain Mapping 20:220-226, 2003.

Algorithms↗

In vivo identification of human cortical areas using high-resolution MRI: an approach to cerebral structure-function correlation.

Understanding the relationship between the structural and functional organization of the human brain is one of the most important goals of neuroscience. Individual variability in brain structure means that it is essential to obtain this information from the same subject. To date, this has been almost impossible. Even though noninvasive functional imaging techniques such as functional MRI (fMRI) are now commonplace, there is no complementary noninvasive structural technique. We present an in vivo method of examining the detailed neuroanatomy of any individual, which can then be correlated with that individual's own functional results. This method utilizes high-resolution structural MRI to identify distinct cortical regions based on cortical lamination structure. We demonstrate that the observed MR lamination patterns relate to myeloarchitecture through a correlation of histology with MRI. In vivo high-resolution MRI studies identify striate cortex, as well as visual area V5, in four individuals, as defined by using fMRI. The anatomical identification of a cortical area (V5MT) outside of striate cortex is a significant advance, proving it possible to identify extra-striate cortical areas and demonstrating that in vivo structural mapping of the human cerebral cortex is possible.

Brain↗

Manganese-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MEMRI) of brain activity and applications to early detection of brain ischemia.

Divalent manganese ion (Mn2+) has been reported to be a useful contrast agent for functional MRI, through a technique named activity-induced manganese-dependent MRI (AIM). In AIM, signal enhancement is related to functional increases in calcium influx, and therefore AIM is, thus far, the only MRI method able to map brain activation in vivo independently of the surrogate hemodynamic changes used in functional MRI. Because of its high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and high sensitivity, AIM allows the use of multi-slice or three-dimensional MRI techniques to map functional activity at high spatial resolution. In the present review, we define AIM as a functional MRI tool based on the administration of divalent ionized manganese through an open or disrupted blood-brain barrier (BBB). The adequacy and efficacy of AIM in detecting neural activation is described in light of supporting experiments on inhibition of calcium channels, FOS expression, and on direct comparison to BOLD- and perfusion-based functional MRI. Two main applications of AIM, mapping brain activation in rat somatosensory cortex, as well stroke research based on the well-established middle cerebral artery occlusion model, are described in detail. Methodological problems associated with a strong dependence on anesthetic conditions, potential corruption due to disruption of the BBB, and unspecific increase of the baseline signal due to acoustical noise are discussed. Finally, recommended preparation methods and experimental protocols for AIM are introduced.

Animals↗

Typical childhood absence seizures are associated with thalamic activation.

Functional MRI with simultaneously acquired EEG (fMRI/EEG) can identify areas of signal change associated with interictal discharges. We report the fMRI/EEG study of a child with newly-diagnosed IGE, performed prior to the start of antiepileptic medication. The 7-years-old girl had very frequent absences, associated with eyelid myoclonia. Her EEG showed frequent, typical 3/sec discharges. Functional MRI was performed with a 3T scanner using whole brain gradient echo-planar imaging, and the EEG was recorded with 18, non-metallic, scalp electrodes. Ten bursts of generalized discharges were captured during 30 minutes fMRI/EEG acquisition. The bursts lasted 3.4 (SD +/- 0.6) seconds. Event-related analysis was performed with SPM2 and iBrain software. Functional MRI showed prominent, bilateral thalamic activation, and less pronounced areas of cortical activation and deactivation. This study demonstrates thalamic activation in typical, untreated childhood absence epilepsy. The cortical signal change may be related to a thalamo-cortical circuit.

Brain Mapping↗

Technical refinements for validating functional MRI-based neuronavigation data by electrical stimulation during cortical language mapping.

Preoperative functional neuroimaging techniques represent an appealing method to localize language areas in tumor surgery, but their reliability still needs to be confirmed by accurate comparison with more invasive but validated mapping techniques like intraoperative electrical cortical stimulation. Two patients harboring a glioma involving speech areas underwent mapping of language function by preoperative functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), whose results were integrated into the neuronavigation device, and by intraoperative electrical stimulation mapping (ESM). The utilization of neuronavigation allowed us to estimate the degree of spatial correspondence between language areas detected by the two techniques. Language areas identified by functional magnetic resonance imaging on the cerebral cortex exposed during surgery corresponded to those identified by invasive mapping in both patients. It was possible to achieve a gross total tumor removal while respecting language areas in both cases, with no permanent postoperative phasic aggravation. The concordance of results between pre- and intraoperative mapping techniques in our patients indicates that preoperative fMRI language mapping may prove useful when planning the resection of intracerebral lesions in language areas. However, accurate neurofunctional imaging protocols and image analysis are crucial to obtain a preoperative language mapping that is in agreement with ESM findings.

Brain Mapping↗

Functional MRI-guided surgery of intracranial tumors.

We describe a technique of registering functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) data sets with the anatomical images used for intraoperative navigation. Three patients with supratentorial tumors were studied, 2 with astrocytomas and 1 with a meningioma. The day before surgery, a functional blood-oxygen-level-dependent MR scan was done. During the same imaging session, an anatomic stereotactic MR scan was performed. The raw data were reconstructed off line on a workstation, and the fMR maps were then registered to the anatomic studies using image header information. Fused images were then transferred to the navigational workstation over an Ethernet connection. At surgery, brain exposure was performed in a standard manner. In each case, the registered scans accurately localized the motor and/or sensory cortex. No new permanent neurological deficits resulted from surgery. The potential advantages of fMRI-guided surgery include: (1) smaller brain exposures; (2) localization of language cortex under general anesthesia; (3) mapping of multiple functional sites, with decreased time and increased case of surgery.

Adult↗

Contrast study on cognitive function with MRI and positron emission tomography imaging in transient global amnesia.

OBJECTIVE: To study cognitive function and cerebral metabolic changes in patients with transient global amnesia (TGA). METHODS: Three patients with TGA were given mini-mental state examination (MMSE), revised Wechsler memory scale (WMS-R) examination and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans after they had been diagnosed as TGA. Using (18)F labelled deoxyglucose as tracer, patients were given a positron emission tomography (PET) examination at different periods during recovery. RESULTS: No obvious abnormality was found in MMSE and MRI scans in the three patients. However, WMS-R examination and cerebral PET imaging displayed cognitive dysfunction of varying degrees and low metabolism in local areas related to memory in 2 of 3 patients. CONCLUSIONS: In TGA patients, cognitive function and cerebral metabolic levels are closely correlated with duration of symptoms. It is necessary to stop the TGA attack as quickly as possible early time.

Aged↗

Analysis of acoustic noise in MRI.

Acoustic or sound noise due to gradient pulsing has been one of the problems in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), both in patient scanning as well as in many areas of psychiatric and neuroscience research such as functional MRI. Our recent observations in functional MRI for the visual and motor cortex show very different results with sound noise in comparison with the results obtained without sound noise. Although a number of ideas have been suggested in the literature about the possible elimination or reduction of sound noise, progress has been slow due to the basic role of gradient pulsing in MR imaging. Before we tackle the sound-noise-reduction problem, we believe that a systematic study of sound or acoustic noise behavior will provide important information for future endeavors in this area of research in MRI systems, in both commercial and research systems. Therefore, we report on some typical behavior of sound noise observed from MRI scanners and the analyses of their characteristics. Data are obtained both from a commercial MRI scanner (GE Signa 1.5-T EPI system) as well as a research-type MRI scanner (KAIS 2.0-T) developed at a university laboratory setting.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging↗

High-resolution MRI of cardiac function with projection reconstruction and steady-state free precession.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the trabecular structure of the endocardial wall of the living human heart, and the effect of that structure on the measurement of myocardial function using MRI. High-resolution MR images (0.8 x 0.8 x 8 mm voxels) of cardiac function were obtained in five volunteers using a combination of undersampled projection reconstruction (PR) and steady-state free precession (SSFP) contrast in ECG-gated breath-held scans. These images provide movies of cardiac function with new levels of endocardial detail. The trabecular-papillary muscle complex, consisting of a mixture of blood and endocardial structures, is measured to constitute as much as 50% of the myocardial wall in some sectors. Myocardial wall strain measurements derived from tagged MR images show correlation between regions of trabeculae and papillary muscles and regions of high strain, leading to an overestimation of function in the lateral wall.

Electrocardiography↗

Prospects for progress in diagnostic imaging.

New fast-imaging MRI systems designed specifically for cardiac magnetic resonance enable new applications of noninvasive vascular imaging. The use of functional MRI and diffusion tensor imaging to map brain function and structure offers a new dimension to an understanding of the human condition. Clinical applications of functional MRI will influence many specialties including surgery, education, and rehabilitation. Functional imaging has the potential to visualize the regional concentration of specific proteins. This imaging at the level of molecules may be possible by use of a contrast material whose signal is changed by local enzymatic activity. The three-dimensional digital data collected in modern imaging techniques allow for virtual endoscopy in the respiratory, alimentary, and cardiovascular systems. Virtual endoscopy may replace many of the more invasive diagnostic methods in the near future. The measurement of clinical decision-making through observer performance studies better informs both the physician and the patient on how to improve upon the quality of clinical practice. These prospects for progress reinforce diagnostic imaging as a cornerstone in medical informatics. The history of creating images used in medicine reveals the invention of diagnostic tools which may provide new information but premature use can result in improper application of a poorly understood technology. Research into the use of new technology may be as important as the technology itself in improving the human condition.

Diagnostic Imaging↗