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Short repetition time multiband echo‐planar imaging with simultaneous pulse recording allows dynamic imaging of the cardiac pulsation signal
Author(s) -
Tong Yunjie,
Hocke Lia M.,
Frederick Blaise deB.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.696
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1522-2594
pISSN - 0740-3194
DOI - 10.1002/mrm.25041
Subject(s) - voxel , pulse (music) , signal (programming language) , scanner , multislice , computer science , neuroimaging , resting state fmri , echo planar imaging , pulse sequence , artificial intelligence , pattern recognition (psychology) , physics , magnetic resonance imaging , nuclear magnetic resonance , neuroscience , medicine , psychology , radiology , programming language , telecommunications , detector
Purpose Recently developed simultaneous multislice echo‐planar imaging (EPI) sequences permit imaging of the whole brain at short repetition time (TR), allowing the cardiac fluctuations to be fully sampled in blood‐oxygen‐level dependent functional MRI (BOLD fMRI). A novel low computational analytical method was developed to dynamically map the passage of the pulsation signal through the brain and visualize the whole cerebral vasculature affected by the pulse signal. This algorithm is based on a simple combination of fast BOLD fMRI and the scanner's own built‐in pulse oximeter. Methods Multiple, temporally shifted copies of the pulse oximeter data (with 0.08 s shifting step and coverage of a 1‐s span) were downsampled and used as cardiac pulsation regressors in a general linear model based analyses (FSL) of the fMRI data. The resulting concatenated z‐statistics maps show the voxels that are affected as the cardiac signal travels through the brain. Results Many voxels were highly correlated with the pulsation regressor or its temporally shifted version. The dynamic and static cardiac pulsation maps obtained from both the task and resting state scans, resembled cerebral vasculature. Conclusion The results demonstrated: (i) cardiac pulsation significantly affects most voxels in the brain; (ii) combining fast fMRI and this analytical method can reveal additional clinical information to functional studies. Magn Reson Med 72:1268–1276, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.