• Shruti Agarwal, Haris I Sair, Noushin Yahyavi-Firouz-Abadi, Raag Airan, and Jay J Pillai.
• Division of Neuroradiology, Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2016 Mar 1; 43 (3): 620-6.

BackgroundTo demonstrate that the problem of brain tumor-related neurovascular uncoupling (NVU) is a significant issue with respect to resting state blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (rsfMRI) similar to task-based BOLD fMRI, in which signal detectability can be compromised by breakdown of normal neurovascular coupling.MethodsWe evaluated seven de novo brain tumor patients who underwent resting state fMRI as part of comprehensive clinical fMRI exams at 3 Tesla. For each of the seven patients who demonstrated evidence of NVU on task-based motor fMRI, we performed both an independent component analysis (ICA) and an atlas-based parcellation-based seed correlation analysis (SCA) of the resting state fMRI data. For each patient, ipsilesional (IL) and contralesional (CL) regions of interest (ROIs) comprising primary motor and somatosensory cortices were used to evaluate BOLD signal changes on Z score maps derived from both ICA and SCA analysis for evidence of NVU. A subsequent two-tailed t-test was performed to determine whether statistically significant differences between the two sides were present that were consistent with NVU.ResultsIn seven patients, overall decreased BOLD signal (based on suprathreshold voxels in ICA and SCA-derived Z-score maps) was noted in IL compared with CL ROIs (P < 0.01), consistent with NVU.ConclusionWe have demonstrated that NVU can result in false negative BOLD signal changes on rsfMRI comparable to previously published findings on standard motor task-based fMRI.© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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