NMR IN BIOMEDICINE NMR Biomed. 2001;14:408–412 DOI:10.1002/nbm.715 Investigation of the initial dip in fMRI at 7 Tesla Essa Yacoub, Amir Shmuel, Josef Pfeuffer, Pierre-Francois Van De Moortele, Gregor Adriany, Kamil Ugurbil and Xiaoping Hu* Center for Magnetic Resonance Research and Department of Radiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Received 5 February 2001; Revised 10 May 2001; Accepted 16 May 2001 ABSTRACT: In agreement with optical imaging studies, previous fMRI studies have reported an initial decrease (i.e. the initial dip) in the BOLD response, which is believed to arise from an increase in oxygen consumption and to be mostly microvascular. To date, experimental studies of the initial dip in humans have been performed at fields up to 4 T, with relatively low spatial resolution. Because the sensitivity to microvascular contribution is increased at high magnetic fields, the present study investigated the initial dip at 7 T. In addition, to reduce the partial volume effect, the study is conducted at a high spatial resolution. The initial dip was detected in all subjects studied and was found to reside mostly in the gray matter. The relative amplitude of the early response was found to be 0.6, higher than that at 4 T (0.3) and 1.5 T (0.11). In addition, based on the assumption that the initial dip is a result of increased oxygen utilization, the fractional change in oxygen utilization was estimated to be 40% of that of the fractional change in cerebral blood flow. These results are in agreement with the notion that the initial dip arises from an increase in oxygen consumption. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEYWORDS: BOLD; fMRI; initial dip; high-resolution; CMRO2 INTRODUCTION The detection of the hemodynamic response secondary to brain activation, using blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD)1–3 contrast in magnetic resonance imaging, has become a routine technique for mapping brain function. However, how specific this hemodynamic response is as a marker of neural activity is still under debate. Several studies, conducted at fields up to 4 T, have shown that BOLD contrast is associated primarily with large vessels, particularly draining veins,4–7 which may be distant from the actual site of neuronal activity. In addition, it has been suggested that the hemodynamic response itself may not be specific to the site of neuronal activity. Intrinsic signal optical imaging studies,8 which have the ability to assess the oxygenation state of hemoglobin with high spatial and temporal resolutions, have provided some details regarding the characteristics of physiological responses to neural activity. In parti*Correspondence to: X. Hu, Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, 2021 Sixth Street SE, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. Email: xiaoping@cmrr.umn.edu Contract/grant sponsor: National Institutes of Health; contract grant number: P41RR08079; contract grant number: RO1MH55346. Contract/grant sponsor: W. M. Keck Foundation. Contract/grant sponsor: National Foundation for Functional Brain Imaging. Abbreviations used: CBF, cerebral blood flow; CMRO2, cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen; OVS, outer volume suppression; PVE, partial volume effect. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. cular, these studies have reported a biphasic response9,10 in deoxyhemoglobin concentration, with an early increase, which began shortly after stimulus onset and lasted about 4 s, followed by a subsequent decrease that remained for several seconds. Furthermore, it was also demonstrated that the early response was localized to columnar structures, while the late response extended beyond the active columns, suggesting a 2–3 mm underlying limitation of the spatial specificity of the positive BOLD response in fMRI10 using single condition mapping. While this conjecture seems to contradict fMRI data that exhibited patterns corresponding to ocular dominance columns,11 those patterns were obtained with differential mapping and their correspondence to columnar activity remains to be verified. Furthermore, recent data in a cat model12 demonstrated that the initial dip provided more reliable orientation columns than the delayed response. Subsequent to the optical imaging studies, the initial increase in deoxyhemoglobin concentration, which should lead to a decrease in the BOLD signal, was observed with both functional MRS13,14 and fMRI.15,16 The initial fMRI studies agreed remarkably well with the optical imaging data. To further understand the early response, additional experimental data were obtained, addressing the issues of the echo-time dependence of the early response,17 its detectability at low field and thereby its field dependence,18 its presence in regions other than the visual cortex17 and potential confounds in previous studies.17 Theoretical analyses suggest that the BOLD contrast NMR Biomed. 2001;14:408–412 INITIAL DIP AT 7 TESLA can be characterized by two components: one that is proportional to the static magnetic field and another that increases quadratically with the static magnetic field.20 The former is believed to arise from macroscopic vessels and the latter from the microvasculature. If the early response reflects the initial increase in oxygen utilization, it is expected to be mainly microvascular and to increase with the static magnetic field quadratically. On the other hand, the late response in the voxels exhibiting the dip may be a combination of both micro- and macro-vascular contributions, particularly at low resolution, and is expected to increase with the static field strength slower than quadratically. As a result, the ratio of the initial dip amplitude to that of the hyperemic response should increase with field strength. At 1.5 T,18 the ratio of the early response to the delayed positive response was found to be 0.11, much less than 0.3 for 4 T.16 In this work, the initial dip is studied at 7 T to provide additional evidence for its field dependence. Although recent studies in a cat model have utilized the dip to map columnar structure at high spatial resolution,12 previous human studies of the initial dip have utilized a relatively low spatial resolution (1.5 1.5 5 mm or 3 3 5 mm) and were affected more by the partial volume effect (PVE). The PVE may reduce the relative amplitude of the observed dip signal if the dip arises mainly from microvasculature, as the PVE mixes microvascular and macrovascular contributions to the late response. With the increase in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the BOLD contrast at 7 T,21 high-resolution studies of the initial dip in humans become feasible and were conducted to provide a detailed examination of the initial dip. There have been several MR studies aimed at assessing the change of oxygenation consumption (i.e. cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen or CMRO2) associated with neuronal stimulation.22–25 Nonetheless, the exact value of the neural activity-induced change in CMRO2 is still under debate. Based on the assumptions that the initial dip arises from the increase in CMRO2 and that PVE is negligible at the spatial resolution used in this study, an estimation of the fractional CMRO2 change relative to the fractional change of cerebral blood flow (CBF) was obtained, providing an alternative estimation of the CMRO2 change that is in agreement with the published data. 409 The experiments were performed on a 90 cm bore 7 T human system, controlled by a Varian console (Varian Inc., Palo Alto, CA). A 6 cm quadrature surface coil was used for transmission and detection. Inversion recovery images were obtained to localize the slices of interest. Based on the scout image, two to three sagittal slices were positioned a few millimeters off the midline, cutting through the calcarine sulcus. T2*-weighted functional images were acquired with a FOV of 3.2 cm in the phaseencoding direction, 12.8 cm in the readout direction and a 2 mm slice thickness. Outer volume suppression (OVS) using a B1 insensitive technique26 was used in the phase encoding direction. Single-shot GE (gradient echo) EPI images, with a total readout time of 30 ms, were acquired using a matrix size of 32 128, yielding an inplane resolution of 1.0 1.0 mm. Two (or three) EPI slices were acquired (150 ms/slice) with a TR of 300 ms (or 450 ms), a TE of 20 ms (T2*gm = 25 ms21), and a flip angle of 35° (or 40°). A single adiabatic RF pulse was applied along with appropriate gradients to saturate the posterior and anterior sides of the desired field of view. The SAR was calculated to be 0.9 W/kg which is well within FDA limits. Visual stimulation was presented via a mirror placed over the subject’s eyes and a rear projection setup that transmitted the stimulus onto a screen placed behind the subject. The subject was presented with flickering black and white checkerboard patterns and asked to fixate on a fixation point in the center of the screen. Each epoch of the stimulus presentation consisted of a 4 s on period and 32 s off period. The epoch was repeated 12 times in a single run. To minimize head motion, a bite bar was employed during the study. In addition, the subject’s breathing and heart rate were monitored. Data processing and analysis The measured k-space data were preprocessed to remove physiological fluctuations associated with respiration and heart beat using a retrospective technique.27 Subsequently, the data were Fourier transformed into the image space for further analysis. METHODS Data acquisition Five normal subjects (three female, two male, with ages between 20 and 25) participated in this study. All subjects provided informed consent to the experimental protocol, which was approved by the institutional review board at the University of Minnesota. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Figure 1. Correlation template used for detecting the initial dip signal (solid line) and the positive response (dashed line). The rectangular box depicts the stimulus presentation NMR Biomed. 2001;14:408–412 410 E. YACOUB ET AL. Figure 2. The time course of pixels activated in the initial dip map shown in Plate 1(a) is represented by the solid line. The dashed line represents the results of ®tting the hemodynamic response to the dip pixels. The region between the vertical lines is that used for the ®t. The rectangular box depicts the stimulus presentation The image time series were processed with correlation analysis28 using two templates, one for the detection of initial dip and the other for detecting the pixels exhibiting the late positive response (Fig. 1), regardless of its initial behavior. The template for the positive response was generated by convolving the stimulation paradigm with a hemodynamic response function given by Friston et al.30 The negative response model was derived from a representative timecourse of the previously published data.15–19 An initial dip map was generated with a cross correlation threshold of 0.52, corresponding to a pixelwise statistical significance of p < 0.02, and spatial cluster size threshold of four pixels, leading to a significance of p < 0.0001 according to the results of Forman et al.29 The connectivity was defined in two dimensions with pixels having one common edge defined as connected. Note that the cluster size threshold was used to eliminate isolated pixels and does not degrade the spatial resolution in the resultant map. The correlation coefficient for the late positive response was thresholded at two levels, one at the same significance level as that for the initial dip map (p < 0.0001) and the other achieved by varying the correlation threshold until the number of activated pixels matched that of the activated pixels in the dip map. The latter was obtained to ascertain if the difference between the dip map and the positive response map was due to sensitivity differences. The spatial overlap between the initial dip and the positive maps was determined for all subjects. 1(a)] exhibits more detailed structure and appears localized to the gray matter (91 5%). The composite map in Plate 1(c) shows that most dip pixels exhibit a significant positive response (hence overlapping with the positive map) and pixels showing positive response alone do not simply surround the dip pixels. Contrasting the dip map to the positive map thresholded to produce the same number of activated pixels [Plate 1(d)], there are substantial differences, indicating that the difference in the spatial pattern of Plate 1(a) and Plate 1(b) is not a result of the sensitivity differences. In fact, the overlap between these maps averaged over all subjects was only 32 4%. The solid line in Fig. 2 represents the time course of pixels showing the initial dip in the map in Plate 1(a). The amplitude of the dip response is almost comparable to that of the positive response. Quantitative analysis shows that the average ratio between the amplitudes of the negative response and the positive response is 0.6 0.1. Compared with 0.11 at 1.5 T18 and 0.3 at 4 T,16 the ratio of 0.6 at 7 T indicates that the relative contribution of the initial response increases with the field strength. Qualitatively, this increase is consistent with the notion that the early response is more of a microvascular origin, while the positive response is less so and the microvascular response is supposed to increase with B0 more rapidly. However, the dependence of the hyperemic response on the magnetic field is more complicated. First, the relative contributions of macro- and micro-vascular components change with B0, with the latter becoming more prominent; in fact, recent experimental results21 suggest that the microvascular contribution becomes dominant at 7 T. Second, if we assume that the dip signal is solely microvascular, the contribution of the macrovascular signal to the hyperemic response in the dip pixels also depends on the amount of PVE, decreasing with spatial resolution. Therefore, the increased ratio of the dip to the hyperemic response can be attributed to all of the above factors. Nonetheless, the dip signal is more prominent at 7 T, making its detection and mapping easier. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A significant initial decrease in the BOLD signal was detected in all five subjects. The functional maps corresponding to the initial dip and those for the positive response are shown in Fig. 2 for one subject. Compared to the positive response map thresholded at the same statistical significance [Plate 1(b)], the dip map [Plate Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Figure 3. The difference between the dip time course (solid line in Fig. 2) and the ®tted positive response (dotted line in Fig. 2). This curve provides an estimate of the signal arising from the oxygen consumption increase NMR Biomed. 2001;14:408–412 Plate 1. (a) The initial dip map for one slice of one subject overlaid on the corresponding T1-weighted anatomic image. (b) The corresponding positive response map obtained at the same statistical con®dence. (c) A composite map contrasting the dip map with the positive map. The overlap is shown in yellow, the pixels with dip alone are shown in red and the pixels with positive response only are shown in green. (d) The positive response map thresholded to match the number of pixels in the initial dip map. Color bars in panels (a), (b), and (d) indicate the color coding for the correlation coef®cients INITIAL DIP AT 7 TESLA Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. NMR Biomed. 2001;14 INITIAL DIP AT 7 TESLA While the high spatial resolution used in this study is not necessary for the observation of the dip signal, it enhanced the detected amplitude by reducing the PVE. In fact, when lower-resolution images were simulated by truncating the measured k-space (data not shown), the dip signal detected showed a similar spatial extent but with a reduced amplitude. This observation is also qualitatively consistent with the much lower amplitude of the dip observed in MRS studies where large voxels were used.13,14 On the other hand, the use of high resolution degraded the SNR in the raw data, slightly compromising the detection sensitivity. Thus, the dependence on spatial resolution of the dip requires further investigation. While the initial dip is clearly evident in the 7 T data, it is still a small signal that requires careful experimental design and effort to detect. For example, the reproducibility of the detected dip pixels, calculated by comparing the results of the two halves of each run, was found to be 53%, a number below that for the positive response (59%). In addition, a cluster size threshold was used to remove isolated pixels in order to improve the reliability. A semi-quantitative interpretation of the measured data can be obtained with the following simplified model. The relaxivity arising from deoxygenated hemoglobin can be written as R 2 / CBV 1 Y 1 where Y is the blood oxygen content and CBV is the cerebral blood volume. The relative change of the BOLD signal, (DS/S), is proportional to DR 2* which is given by20 R 2 Y = 1 Y CBV/CBV 2 Using the conservation of matter and assuming that the relative changes in CMRO2 and CBF are small enough that high order terms can be ignored, Y = 1 Y / CBF/CBF CMRO2 =CMRO2 3 Assuming that Grubb’s relationship31 holds, DCBV/CBV 0.38 DCBF/CBF. Consequently, S=S1 R 2 CMRO2 =CMRO2 0:62CBF/CBF 4 Therefore, the response of pixels exhibiting the initial dip can be described as a summation of two components: one [first term in eqn (4)] reflecting the CMRO2 change and the other [second term in eqn (4)] corresponding to the BOLD response as a result of the change of CBF (i.e. the hemodynamic response). It is assumed that the former follows the latter by a few seconds.32 Assuming that the hemodynamic response of the dip pixels takes the same form as that of pixels exhibiting the positive response only, the shape of the hemodynamic response is estimated from the timecourse of pixels exhibiting the Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 411 positive response only. This response form was then fitted to a 10 s portion of the time course of the dip pixels, starting at 2 s after the stimulus cessation, to obtain the hemodynamic response in these pixels. Subsequently, a subtraction of the fitted response from the actual dip time course provided an estimate of the CMRO2 response [see eqn (4)]. It is also interesting to note that taking the amplitudes of the dip and the hyperemic response directly from the time course underestimates the ratio of the CMRO2-related change over CBF-related change because they tend to cancel each other in the region where they overlap. The result of modeling the response of pixels exhibiting the dip for one of the subjects is shown in Fig. 2. In this figure, the dotted line shows the fit of scaling the time course of the pixels exhibiting the positive response alone to the time course of dip pixels (solid line). The difference time course shown in Fig. 3 is taken as the MR response to CMRO2 changes. The ratio between this amplitude and that of the positive amplitude was calculated for all subjects. When averaged over all five subjects, the ratio was 0.72 0.15. Thus, CMRO2 =CMRO2 0:72 0:62CBF/CBF 0:44 CBF/CBF 5 In other words, DCMRO2/CMRO2 is about 40% of DCBF/CBF. For example, a 50% change in CBF means a 22% change in CMRO2. This value falls within the range of published values.22–25 Of course, the CMRO2 change arrived at above is only an estimate because it depended on a number of assumptions. In addition to assuming that the dip signal arises from an increase in CMRO2, it was assumed that the CBF-related BOLD change in the dip pixels had the same form as the BOLD response in pixels not exhibiting the dip. While this assumption may not be fully satisfied, particularly when large vessel contributions are substantial, it is a reasonable assumption for the present data because at 7 T the large vessel contributions are diminished20 and the PVE is negligible with the spatial resolution used. If large vessel contributions are significant in the time course of pixels not exhibiting the dip, this time course may be somewhat delayed relative to the CBF related BOLD effects in the dip pixels, which are presumably microvascular. As a result, this may lead to an underestimation of CMRO2. CONCLUSION In this work, the initial dip in the BOLD response to visual stimulation was investigated at 7 T with high spatial resolution. 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