Search

Functional connectivity MRI, based on Blood-Oxygenation-Level-Dependent (BOLD) signals, is typically performed while the subject is at rest. On the other hand, BOLD is also widely used in physiological imaging such as cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) mapping using hypercapnia (HC) as a modulator. We therefore hypothesize that hypercapnia BOLD data can be used to extract FC metrics after factoring out the effects of the physiological modulation, which will allow simultaneous assessment of neural and vascular function and may be particularly important in populations such as aging and cerebrovascular diseases. The present work aims to systematically examine the feasibility of hypercapnia BOLD-based FC mapping using three commonly applied analysis methods, specifically dual-regression Independent Component Analysis (ICA), region-based FC matrix analysis, and graph-theory based network analysis, in a large cohort of 170 healthy subjects ranging from 20 to 88 years old. To validate the hypercapnia BOLD results, we also compared these FC metrics with those obtained from conventional resting-state data. ICA analysis of the hypercapnia BOLD data revealed FC maps that strongly resembled those reported in the literature. FC matrix using region-based analysis showed a correlation of 0.97 on the group-level and 0.54 ± 0.10 on the individual-level, when comparing between hypercapnia and resting-state results. Although the correspondence on the individual-level was moderate, this was primarily attributed to variations intrinsic to FC mapping, because a corresponding resting-vs-resting comparison in a sub-cohort (N = 39) revealed a similar correlation of 0.57 ± 0.09. Graph-theory computations were also feasible in hypercapnia BOLD data and indices of global efficiency, clustering coefficient, modularity, and segregation were successfully derived. Hypercapnia FC results revealed age-dependent differences in which within-network connections generally exhibited an age-dependent decrease while between-network connections showed an age-dependent increase., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Hypercapnia challenge (e.g. inhalation of CO 2 ) has been used in calibrated fMRI as well as in the mapping of vascular reactivity in cerebrovascular diseases. An important assumption underlying these measurements is that CO 2 is a pure vascular challenge but does not alter neural activity. However, recent reports have suggested that CO 2 inhalation may suppress neural activity and brain metabolic rate. Therefore, the goal of this study is to propose and test a gas challenge that is truly "iso-metabolic," by adding a hypoxic component to the hypercapnic challenge, since hypoxia has been shown to enhance cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO 2 ). Measurement of global CMRO 2 under various gas challenge conditions revealed that, while hypercapnia (P = 0.002) and hypoxia (P = 0.002) individually altered CMRO 2 (by -7.6 ± 1.7% and 16.7 ± 4.1%, respectively), inhalation of hypercapnic-hypoxia gas (5% CO 2 /13% O 2 ) did not change brain metabolism (CMRO 2 change: 1.5 ± 3.9%, P = 0.92). Moreover, cerebral blood flow response to the hypercapnic-hypoxia challenge (in terms of % change per mmHg CO 2 change) was even greater than that to hypercapnia alone (P = 0.007). Findings in this study suggest that hypercapnic-hypoxia gas challenge may be a useful maneuver in physiological MRI as it preserves vasodilatory response yet does not alter brain metabolism.

Although cerebrovascular factors are the second leading cause of cognitive impairment and dementia in elderly, the precise spatial and temporal trajectories of vascular decline in aging have not been fully characterized. With an advanced cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) MRI technique that specifically informs vascular stiffness and dilatory ability of cerebral vessels, we present four-year longitudinal CVR data measured in 116 healthy individuals (20-88 years of age). Our data revealed a spatial heterogeneity in vascular decline in aging (p = 0.003), in that temporal lobe showed the fastest rate of longitudinal CVR decline, followed by parietal and frontal lobes. The rate of CVR decline was also age-dependent. Middle age, not older age, manifested the fastest rate of longitudinal CVR decline (p

Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) is a specific indicator of autoregulatory efficiency. Studies have demonstrated that CVR depends on the baseline vascular dilation status between groups. Within the brain, there also exist spatial variations in both the resting cerebral blood flow (CBF) and CVR across different cerebral regions. However, the relationship between the regional CBF and CVR remains unclear. Hence, the primary goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between the resting CBF using pseudocontinuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) technique and CVR using blood oxygenation level‐dependent (BOLD) technique across different cerebral regions. Eleven male and 14 female young volunteers were recruited in this study. Each subject was asked to perform the breath‐holding challenge to evaluate CVR at 3 T. The resting CBF was measured using pCASL in each subject. The relationships between CBF and CVR across the lobes were evaluated using the Spearman's rank test. The results showed that, for both sexes, the frontal lobe had the maximal resting perfusion but minimal vascular response to hypercapnia, whereas the occipital lobe had the lowest baseline CBF but maximal reactivity to hypercapnia, suggesting low and high autoregulatory efficiencies at high and low resting CBF in the brain, respectively. Sex‐related differences were observed in CBF but not in CVR. These findings may be of clinical interest in the assessment of cerebrovascular reserve and regional‐dependent vascular diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To devise an improved blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) imaging protocol for cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) measurement that can remove a known artifact of negative values.Methods: Theoretical and simulation studies were first performed to understand the biophysical mechanism of the negative CVR signals, through which improved BOLD sequence parameters were proposed. This was achieved by equating signal intensities between cerebrospinal fluid and blood, by means of shortening the echo time (TE) of the BOLD sequence. Then, 10 healthy volunteers were recruited to participate in an experimental study, in which we compared the CVR results of two versions of the optimized ("Opt1" and "Opt2") protocols with that of the standard protocol at 3 Tesla. Two sessions were performed for each subject to test the reproducibility of all three protocols.Results: Experimental results demonstrated that the optimized protocols resulted in elimination of negative-CVR voxels. Quantitative CVR results were compared across protocols, which show that the optimized protocols yielded smaller CVR values (Opt1: 0.16 ± 0.01 %BOLD/mmHg CO2 ; Opt2: 0.15 ± 0.01 %BOLD/mmHg CO2 ) than (P < 0.001) the standard protocol (0.21 ± 0.01 %BOLD/mmHg CO2 ), but the CNR was comparable (P = 0.1) to the standard protocol. The coefficient-of-variation between repetitions was found to be 5.6 ± 1.4%, 6.3 ± 1.6%, and 6.9 ± 0.9% for the three protocols, but there were no significant differences (P = 0.65).Conclusion: Based on the theoretical and experimental results obtained from this study, we suggest that the use of a TE shorter than those used in fMRI is necessary to minimize negative artifact in CVR results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) can give insight into the cerebrovascular function. CVR can be estimated by measuring a blood‐oxygen‐level‐dependent (BOLD) response combined with breath‐holding (BH). The reproducibility of this technique has been addressed and existing studies have focused on short‐term reproducibility using a 3 T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system. However, little is known about the long‐term reproducibility of this procedure and the corresponding reproducibility using a 1.5 T MRI system. Here, we systematically examined the short‐ and long‐term reproducibility of BOLD responses to BH across field strengths. Nine subjects participated in three MRI sessions separated by 30 minutes (sessions 1 and 2: short term) and 68–92 days (sessions 1 and 3, long term) at both 1.5 and 3 T MRI. Our findings revealed that significant differences between field strengths were detected in the activated gray matter volume and BOLD signal change (both P < 0.001), with smaller magnitudes at 1.5 T. However, activation patterns were reproducible, independent of the time interval, brain region or field strength. All interscan coefficient of variation values were below the 33% fiducial limit, and the intraclass correlation coefficient values were above 0.4, which is usually considered the acceptability limit in functional studies. These findings suggest that the response of BOLD signal to BH for assessing CVR is reproducible over time at 1.5 and 3 T. This technique can be considered a tool for monitoring longitudinal changes in patients with cerebrovascular diseases, and its use should be encouraged for clinical 1.5 T MRI systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]