Article
Clinical Neurology
Silja Raty, Riikka Ruuth, Katri Silvennoinen, Bernhard A. Sabel, Turgut Tatlisumak, Simo Vanni
Summary: In this study, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) was used to study functional connectivity (FC) in chronic occipital stroke patients with homonymous visual field defects before and after receiving repetitive transorbital alternating current stimulation (rtACS). The results showed no significant differences in whole-network FC between occipital stroke patients and healthy controls, and rtACS treatment did not affect FC in this setting.
NEUROREHABILITATION AND NEURAL REPAIR
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Dingrong Guo, Jiongjiong Yang
Summary: The study found that reactivating schema representations in the brain during the learning of new object-scene associations can enhance memory performance. This reactivation only affects associative memory performance in consistent schema conditions and increases functional connectivity between specific brain regions.
Article
Geriatrics & Gerontology
Jia-Yan Shi, Li-Min Cai, Jia-Hui Lin, Zhang-Yu Zou, Xiao-Hong Zhang, Hua-Jun Chen
Summary: This study is the first to investigate the alterations in the patterns of dynamic functional connection density (dFCD) involving amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The results show that ALS patients exhibit aberrant dynamic properties in brain functional architecture. The evaluation of dFCD improves our understanding of the pathological mechanisms underlying ALS and may assist in its diagnosis.
FRONTIERS IN AGING NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Yun Wang, Xiongying Chen, Rui Liu, Zhifang Zhang, Jingjing Zhou, Yuan Feng, Chao Jiang, Xi-Nian Zuo, Yuan Zhou, Gang Wang
Summary: Neuroimaging studies have shown gender differences in brain functions, but few have looked at the influence of phase-encoding direction in echo-planar imaging on these differences. This research collected fMRI data in different PE directions and found significant differences in brain activity between genders, indicating the importance of considering PE direction in resting-state fMRI studies in the future.
FRONTIERS IN NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Peripheral Vascular Disease
Darius A. Gerlach, Jorge Manuel, Alex Hoff, Hendrik Kronsbein, Fabian Hoffmann, Karsten Heusser, Heimo Ehmke, Jens Jordan, Jens Tank, Florian Beissner
Summary: The study utilized high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging to reveal the hypothalamic and medullary responses to acute hypoxia in healthy men, providing insights into the central pathways integrating chemoreflexes and the potential for studying cardiovascular disease and responses to chemoreceptor modulation.
Article
Neuroimaging
Bernadette McCann, Jacob Levman, Nicole Baumer, Melanie Y. Lam, Tadashi Shiohama, Liam Cogger, Allissa MacDonald, Prahar Ijner, Emi Takahashi
Summary: Retrospective analysis of MRI examinations in individuals with Down syndrome revealed volumetric brain abnormalities, which may explain phenotypic features of DS and confirm findings from previous literature.
NEUROIMAGE-CLINICAL
(2021)
Article
Immunology
Jing Sui, Xiang Li, Ryan P. Bell, Sheri L. Towe, Syam Gadde, Nan-Kuei Chen, Christina S. Meade
Summary: This study investigated the impact of HIV infection on brain structure and function using multimodal MRI scanning and neuropsychological testing. The results showed that individuals living with HIV had lower cognitive functioning and that alterations in brain structure and function could distinguish between HIV-positive and HIV-negative individuals.
CLINICAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES
(2021)
Article
Anatomy & Morphology
Tory O. Frizzell, Elisha Phull, Mishaa Khan, Xiaowei Song, Lukas A. Grajauskas, Jodie Gawryluk, Ryan C. N. D'Arcy
Summary: This study evaluated white matter neuroplasticity in healthy adults pre-post motor training, specifically focusing on motor learning in the non-dominant hand. Changes in neuroplasticity were observed in the internal capsule and corpus callosum, with significant amplitude reductions in low-frequency oscillations implicating optimized transmission through altered myelination. The findings open new avenues for white matter investigations and advance MRI clinical applications.
BRAIN STRUCTURE & FUNCTION
(2022)
Article
Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
Fei Xiong, Tilman Emrich, U. Joseph Schoepf, Ning Jin, Sarahrose Hall, Jean Marie Ruddy, Daniel Giese, Carla Lautenschlager, Anna Lena Emrich, Akos Varga-Szemes
Summary: This study evaluated a compressed sensing accelerated 2D real-time phase-contrast MRI technique for accurate beat-to-beat flow measurements without requiring breath-holding. The results showed good measurement consistency and correlation in both phantom and healthy volunteer studies, with slightly underestimated maximum velocities and flow rates.
EUROPEAN RADIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Helge Herthum, Hugo Carrillo, Axel Osses, Sergio Uribe, Ingolf Sack, Cristobal Bertoglio
Summary: This article proposes an optimal multiple motion encoding method (OMME) to address the issue of phase wraps in high-efficiency motion encoding in MRI, aiming to improve the fidelity of motion images. The study demonstrates that OMME, applied in MRE data, successfully combines multiple phase images with different motion encoding gradients, outperforming dual encoding strategies in terms of motion-to-noise ratio (MNR) or the number of successfully reconstructed voxels. The proposed method enables the generation of wrap-free phase images with high MNR, particularly beneficial for obtaining high-resolution images in MRE.
MEDICAL IMAGE ANALYSIS
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Merve Kaptan, S. Johanna Vannesjo, Toralf Mildner, Ulrike Horn, Ronald Hartley-Davies, Valeria Oliva, Jonathan C. W. Brooks, Nikolaus Weiskopf, Juergen Finsterbusch, Falk Eippert
Summary: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the human spinal cord faces challenges due to signal loss caused by local magnetic field inhomogeneities. This study proposes a slice-specific z-shimming technique to address this issue. The effects of z-shimming on various aspects of spinal fMRI are evaluated, and two automated procedures are developed to improve upon the time-consuming and subjective manual selection of z-shims. The results demonstrate the beneficial effects of z-shimming across different echo times and for both the dorsal and ventral horn. The automated approaches are faster than the manual one, leading to significant improvements in gray matter tSNR compared to no z-shimming. While the field-map-based approach performed slightly worse than the manual one, the EPI-based approach performed as well as the manual one and was validated on an external dataset. Overall, automated z-shimming may enhance data quality and reproducibility in future spinal fMRI studies.
HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING
(2022)
Article
Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
Naofumi Yoshida, Takeshi Nakaura, Kosuke Morita, Masami Yoneyama, Shota Tanoue, Yasuhiro Yokota, Hiroyuki Uetani, Yasunori Nagayama, Masafumi Kidoh, Minako Azuma, Toshinori Hirai
Summary: This study evaluated the effectiveness of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) using compressed SENSE technology in head and neck magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The results showed that compressed SENSE technology can improve image quality, homogeneity, and reduce distortion while maintaining ADC values and scan time. This is of great significance for the diagnosis of head and neck diseases.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF RADIOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Neuroimaging
Robert L. Barry, Suma Babu, Sheeba Arnold Anteraper, Christina Triantafyllou, Boris Keil, Olivia E. Rowe, D. Rangaprakash, Sabrina Paganoni, Robert Lawson, Christina Dheel, Paul M. Cernasov, Bruce R. Rosen, Eva-Maria Ratai, Nazem Atassi
Summary: The study identified disruptions in functional connectivity in ALS patients at cerebellar lobule VI, a transition zone between anterior motor networks and posterior non-motor networks in the cerebellum, which is associated with complex motor and cognitive processing tasks. This observation adds to the growing body of research implicating the cerebellum in ALS, and suggests potential for leveraging high-resolution imaging to visualize differences in functional connectivity disturbances in various genotypes and phenotypes along the ALS-frontotemporal dementia spectrum.
NEUROIMAGE-CLINICAL
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Pamela Wochner, Torben Schneider, Jason Stockmann, Jack Lee, Ralph Sinkus
Summary: Diffusion MRI encodes the diffusion of water molecules by using linearly varying gradient fields. However, when a quadratic gradient field is used, the diffusion in anisotropic media leads to changes in phase and preserves a large portion of the signal. This study confirmed the phase change in anisotropic fiber phantoms through simulations and MR experiments, which aligned with the predicted analytic model.
Review
Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
Anjan Bhattarai, Gary F. Egan, Paul Talman, Phyllis Chua, Zhaolin Chen
Summary: This review provides an overview of MRI techniques used to investigate iron dysregulation in ALS, highlighting their potential uses and limitations in disease diagnosis and prognosis. It recommends further longitudinal studies to validate the efficacy of these techniques and concludes that quantitative iron assessment using QSM in MRI holds great potential as a sensitive diagnostic and prognostic marker in ALS. Furthermore, combining multimodal neuroimaging markers with iron imaging may offer improved sensitivity in ALS diagnosis and prognosis, contributing significantly to clinical care and treatment trials.
JOURNAL OF MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING
(2022)