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Intrasession and Intersession Reproducibility of Artificial Scotoma pRF Mapping Results at Ultra- High Fields

Intrasession and Intersession Reproducibility of Artificial Scotoma pRF Mapping Results at Ultra- High Fields

Authors :
Linhardt, David
Pawloff, Maximilian
Woletz, Michael
Hummer, Allan
Tik, Martin
Vasileiadi, Maria
Ritter, Markus
Lerma-Usabiaga, Garikoitz
Schmidt-Erfurth, Ursula
Windischberger, Christian
Linhardt, David
Pawloff, Maximilian
Woletz, Michael
Hummer, Allan
Tik, Martin
Vasileiadi, Maria
Ritter, Markus
Lerma-Usabiaga, Garikoitz
Schmidt-Erfurth, Ursula
Windischberger, Christian
Publication Year :
2022

Abstract

Published online September 6, 2022.<br />Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) combined with population receptive field (pRF) mapping allows for associating positions on the visual cortex to areas on the visual field. Apart from applications in healthy subjects, this method can also be used to examine dysfunctions in patients suffering from partial visual field losses. While such objective measurement of visual deficits (scotoma) is of great importance for, e.g., longitudinal studies addressing treatment effects, it requires a thorough assessment of accuracy and reproducibility of the results obtained. In this study, we quantified the reproducibility of pRF mapping results within and across sessions in case of central visual field loss in a group of 15 human subjects. We simulated scotoma by masking a central area of 2° radius from stimulation to establish ground-truth conditions. This study was performed on a 7T ultra-high field MRI scanner for increased sensitivity. We found excellent intrasession and intersession reproducibility for the pRF center position (Spearman correlation coefficients for x, y: .0.95; eccentricity: .0.87; polar angle: .0.98), but only modest reproducibility for pRF size (Spearman correlation coefficients around 0.4). We further examined the scotoma detection performance using an automated method based on a reference dataset acquired with full-field stimulation. For the 2° artificial scotoma, the group-averaged scotoma sizes were estimated at between 1.92° and 2.19° for different sessions. We conclude that pRF mapping of visual field losses yields robust, reproducible measures of retinal function and suggest the use of pRF mapping as an objective method for monitoring visual deficits during therapeutic interventions or disease progression.

Details

Database :
OAIster
Notes :
Austrian Science Fund (FWF) P35583; P33180; KLI670 Eusko Jaurlaritza (Gobierno Vasco) BERC 2022-2025 Spanish State Research Agency CEX2020-001010-S Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation IJC2020-042887-I, English
Publication Type :
Electronic Resource
Accession number :
edsoai.on1364682488
Document Type :
Electronic Resource