Clinical fMRI: Evidence for a 7 T benefit over 3 T

Despite there being an increasing number of installations of ultra high field MR systems (> 3 T) in clinical environments, no functional patient investigations have yet examined possible benefits for functional diagnostics. Here we performed presurgical localization of the primary motor hand area on 3 T and 7 T Siemens scanners with identical investigational procedures and comparable system specific sequence optimizations. Results from 17 patients showed significantly higher functional sensitivity of the 7 T system measured via percent signal change, mean t-values, number of suprathreshold voxels and contrast to noise ratio. On the other hand, 7 T data suffered from a significant increase of artifacts (ghosting, head motion). We conclude that ultra high field systems provide a clinically relevant increase of functional sensitivity for patient investigations.

[1]  Jullie W Pan,et al.  Short echo spectroscopic imaging of the human brain at 7T using transceiver arrays , 2009, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[2]  Oliver Kraff,et al.  Assessing a Dysplastic Cerebellar Gangliocytoma (Lhermitte-Duclos Disease) with 7T MR Imaging , 2010, Korean journal of radiology.

[3]  Essa Yacoub,et al.  Retinotopic mapping with spin echo BOLD at 7T. , 2010, Magnetic resonance imaging.

[4]  Lawrence L. Wald,et al.  Comparison of physiological noise at 1.5 T, 3 T and 7 T and optimization of fMRI acquisition parameters , 2005, NeuroImage.

[5]  Yukihiko Fujii,et al.  In Vivo Visualization of Senile‐Plaque‐Like Pathology in Alzheimer's Disease Patients by MR Microscopy on a 7T System , 2008, Journal of neuroimaging : official journal of the American Society of Neuroimaging.

[6]  Markus Barth,et al.  Comparison of fMRI coregistration results between human experts and software solutions in patients and healthy subjects , 2007, European Radiology.

[7]  Thomas E. Nichols,et al.  Controlling the familywise error rate in functional neuroimaging: a comparative review , 2003, Statistical methods in medical research.

[8]  Stefan Maderwald,et al.  fMRI at 7 T: Whole-brain coverage and signal advantages even infratentorially? , 2007, NeuroImage.

[9]  Peter G. Morris,et al.  fMRI at 1.5, 3 and 7 T: Characterising BOLD signal changes , 2009, NeuroImage.

[10]  Stefan Skare,et al.  Clinical multishot DW‐EPI through parallel imaging with considerations of susceptibility, motion, and noise , 2007, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[11]  Robin M Heidemann,et al.  Generalized autocalibrating partially parallel acquisitions (GRAPPA) , 2002, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[12]  K. Uğurbil,et al.  Microvascular BOLD contribution at 4 and 7 T in the human brain: Gradient‐echo and spin‐echo fMRI with suppression of blood effects , 2003, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[13]  J. D. de Certaines,et al.  Performance assessment and quality control in MRI by Eurospin test objects and protocols. , 1993, Magnetic resonance imaging.

[14]  N. Logothetis,et al.  Neurophysiological investigation of the basis of the fMRI signal , 2001, Nature.

[15]  A. Shmuel,et al.  Imaging brain function in humans at 7 Tesla , 2001, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[16]  Ravi S. Menon,et al.  On the characteristics of functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain. , 1998, Annual review of biophysics and biomolecular structure.

[17]  Pratik Mukherjee,et al.  High‐Resolution Phased‐Array MRI of the Human Brain at 7 Tesla: Initial Experience in Multiple Sclerosis Patients , 2010, Journal of neuroimaging : official journal of the American Society of Neuroimaging.

[18]  C Windischberger,et al.  Quantification of fMRI artifact reduction by a novel plaster cast head holder , 2000, Human brain mapping.

[19]  Roland Beisteiner,et al.  How much are clinical fMRI reports influenced by standard postprocessing methods? An investigation of normalization and region of interest effects in the medial temporal lobe , 2010, Human brain mapping.

[20]  Nikos Evangelou,et al.  A Comparison of 3T and 7T in the Detection of Small Parenchymal Veins Within MS Lesions , 2009, Investigative radiology.

[21]  M. Schlamann,et al.  First Clinical Study on Ultra-High-Field MR Imaging in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis: Comparison of 1.5T and 7T , 2009, American Journal of Neuroradiology.

[22]  Markus Barth,et al.  Contrast‐to‐noise ratio (CNR) as a quality parameter in fMRI , 2007, Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI.

[23]  Hugo D. Critchley,et al.  Brain activity relating to the contingent negative variation: an fMRI investigation , 2004, NeuroImage.

[24]  K. Uğurbil,et al.  Experimental determination of the BOLD field strength dependence in vessels and tissue , 1997, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[25]  Amir Reza Tahamtan,et al.  Evaluation of preoperative high magnetic field motor functional MRI (3 Tesla) in glioma patients by navigated electrocortical stimulation and postoperative outcome , 2005, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.

[26]  Zang-Hee Cho,et al.  Hypertension Correlates With Lenticulostriate Arteries Visualized by 7T Magnetic Resonance Angiography , 2009, Hypertension.

[27]  M. Zaitsev,et al.  High resolution single-shot EPI at 7T , 2008, Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine.