According to the National Brain Tumor Society (1), an estimated 700,000 people in the United States are living with a primary brain tumor and about 80,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with a primary brain tumor each year. As a result, large numbers of people must undergo brain surgery every year. Current state-of-art for presurgical, noninvasive planning of tumor removal is to perform blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
During scanning, a patient performs a specific task to localize brain functional regions related to the task. A decrease in the relative concentration of deoxyhemoglobin in active cortex reduces the T2/T2* shortening effects of deoxyhemoglobin with resultant net increase in the BOLD signal in activated areas. fMRI necessitates image acquisition methods, which are sensitive to changes in T2* and T2, have sufficient spatial resolution to cover the entire brain, and have sufficient temporal resolution to detect changes in BOLD signal associated with specifics tasks. The spatial resolutions of clinical fMRI presurgical mapping are usually between 8 mm3 and 64 mm3 (i.e. 2–4 mm along each voxel dimension). Given that human cortex is about 3 mm thick, acquiring functional mapping signals with the highest possible fidelity to the underlying neuronal processes is critical for presurgical mapping. With the advent of ultrahigh magnetic field human MRI scanners, i.e., 7T and above, recent studies have probed into depth-dependent cortical mapping with high resolution functional MRI of human brain. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to enhance resolution of 3T fMRI using artificial intelligence on 7T fMRI for the overall goal of depth-dependent cortical mapping in clinical fMRI.
Research Team:
- Shruti Agarwal
- Haris Sair