Magnetic resonance in medicine : official journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
-
Comparative Study
Comparison of diffusion-weighted high-resolution CBF and spin-echo BOLD fMRI at 9.4 T.
The quantification of blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI) signals is closely related to cerebral blood flow (CBF) change; therefore, understanding the exact relationship between BOLD and CBF changes on a pixel-by-pixel basis is fundamental. In this study, quantitative CBF changes induced by neural activity were used to quantify BOLD signal changes during somatosensory stimulation in alpha-chloralose-anesthetized rats. To examine the influence of fast-moving vascular spins in quantifying CBF, bipolar gradients were employed. ⋯ To compare BOLD and CBF signal changes induced by neural stimulation, a spin-echo (SE) sequence with long SE time of 40 ms at 9.4 T was used in conjunction with an arterial spin labeling technique. SE BOLD changes were quantitatively correlated to CBF changes on a pixel-by-pixel and animal-by-animal basis. Thus, SE BOLD-based fMRI at high magnetic fields allows a quantitative comparison of functional brain activities across brain regions and subjects.
-
Imaging cortical association tracts in the human brain using diffusion-tensor-based axonal tracking.
Diffusion-tensor fiber tracking was used to identify the cores of several long-association fibers, including the anterior (ATR) and posterior (PTR) thalamic radiations, and the uncinate (UNC), superior longitudinal (SLF), inferior longitudinal (ILF), and inferior fronto-occipital (IFO) fasciculi. Tracking results were compared to existing anatomical knowledge, and showed good qualitative agreement. ⋯ The interindividual variability of these reconstructions was assessed in a common spatial reference frame (Talairach space) using probabilistic mapping. As a first illustration of this technical capability, a reduction in brain connectivity in a patient with a childhood neurodegenerative disease (X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy) was demonstrated.
-
Arterial spin labeling (ASL) permits quantification of tissue perfusion without the use of MR contrast agents. With standard ASL techniques such as flow-sensitive alternating inversion recovery (FAIR) the signal from arterial blood is measured at a fixed inversion delay after magnetic labeling. As no image information is sampled during this delay, FAIR measurements are inefficient and time-consuming. ⋯ For the given scanner hardware the parameters were: temporal resolution 100 ms, 23 images, flip-angle 25.4 degrees. In a normal volunteer experiment with these parameters an average perfusion value of 48.2 +/- 12.1 ml/100 g/min was measured in the brain. With the ability to obtain ITS-FAIR time series with high temporal resolution arterial transit times in the range of -138 - 1054 ms were measured, where nonphysical negative values were found in voxels containing large vessels.
-
BOLD fMRI is hampered by dropout of signal in the orbitofrontal and parietal brain regions due to magnetic field gradients near air-tissue interfaces. This work reports the use of spiral-in trajectories that begin at the edge of k-space and end at the origin, and spiral in/out trajectories in which a spiral-in readout is followed by a conventional spiral-out trajectory. ⋯ The spiral-in and spiral-out images can be combined in several ways to simultaneously achieve increased signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and reduced dropout artifacts. Activation experiments employing an olfaction task demonstrate significantly increased activation volumes due to reduced dropout, and overall increased SNR in all regions.
-
A two-dimensional (2D) chemical shift correlated MR spectroscopic (COSY) sequence integrated into a new volume localization technique (90 degrees -180 degrees -90 degrees ) is proposed for whole-body MR spectroscopy (MRS). Using the product operator formalism, a theoretical calculation of the volume localization as well as the coherence transfer efficiencies in 2D MRS is presented. Phantom model solutions were used to test and optimize the efficiency of the proposed sequence. ⋯ The cross-peak intensities excited by the proposed 2D sequence were asymmetric with respect to the diagonal peaks. Localized COSY (L-COSY) spectra of cerebral prefrontal and occipital gray/white matter regions in 15 healthy controls are presented. Magn Reson Med 46:58-67, 2001.