Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Here, we mapped fMRI responses to incrementally changing shapes along a continuous 3D morph, ranging from a head ("face") to a house ("place"). The response to each shape was mapped independently by using single-stimulus imaging, and stimulus shapes were equated for lower-level visual cues.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by inflexible and repetitive behaviour. Response monitoring involves evaluating the consequences of behaviour and making adjustments to optimize outcomes. Deficiencies in this function, and abnormalities in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) on which it relies, have been reported as contributing factors to autistic disorders. We investigated whether ACC structure and function during response monitoring were associated with repetitive behaviour in ASD.

The parietal cortex has traditionally been implicated in spatial attention and eye-movement processes. Recent functional neuroimaging studies have found that activation in the parietal cortex is related to successful recognition memory. The activated regions consistently include the intraparietal sulcus in the lateral parietal cortex and the precuneus in the medial parietal cortex. However, little is known about the functional differences between lateral and medial parietal cortices in the memory retrieval process.

Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) MRI has been shown capable of detecting dilute labile protons and abnormal tissue glucose/oxygen metabolism, and thus, may serve as a complementary imaging technique to the conventional MRI methods. CEST imaging, however, is also dependent on experimental parameters such as the power, duration, and waveform of the irradiation RF pulse. As a result, its sensitivity and specificity for microenvironment properties such as pH is not optimal.

Amide proton transfer (APT) imaging is a variant form of chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) imaging that is based on the magnetization exchange between bulk water and labile endogenous amide protons. Given that chemical exchange is pH-dependent, APT imaging has been shown capable of imaging ischemic tissue acidosis, and as such, may serve as a surrogate metabolic imaging marker complementary to perfusion and diffusion MRI. In order for APT imaging to properly diagnose heterogeneous pathologies such as stroke and cancer, fast volumetric APT imaging has to be developed.

Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) MRI provides a sensitive detection mechanism that allows characterization of dilute labile protons usually undetectable by conventional MRI. Particularly, amide proton transfer (APT) imaging, a variant of CEST MRI, has been shown capable of detecting ischemic acidosis, and may serve as a surrogate metabolic imaging marker. For preclinical CEST imaging, continuous-wave (CW) radiofrequency (RF) irradiation is often applied so that the steady state CEST contrast can be reached.

The neurophysiological basis of variability in the latency of evoked neural responses has been of interest for decades. We describe a method to identify white matter pathways that may contribute to inter-individual variability in the timing of neural activity. We investigated the relation of the latency of peak visual responses in occipital cortex as measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG) to fractional anisotropy (FA) in the entire brain as measured with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in eight healthy young adults.

Spatially tailored radio frequency (RF) excitations accelerated with parallel transmit systems provide the opportunity to create shaped volume excitations or mitigate inhomogeneous B(1) excitation profiles with clinically relevant pulse lengths. While such excitations are often designed as a least-squares optimized approximation to a target magnitude and phase profile, adherence to the target phase profile is usually not important as long as the excitation phase is slowly varying compared with the voxel dimension.

At high magnetic field, B(1)(+) non-uniformity causes undesired inhomogeneity in SNR and image contrast. Parallel RF transmission using tailored 3D k-space trajectory design has been shown to correct for this problem and produce highly uniform in-plane magnetization with good slice selection profile within a relatively short excitation duration. However, at large flip angles the excitation k-space based design method fails. Consequently, several large-flip-angle parallel transmission designs have recently been suggested.

Slice-selective RF waveforms that mitigate severe B1+ inhomogeneity at 7 Tesla using parallel excitation were designed and validated in a water phantom and human studies on six subjects using a 16-element degenerate stripline array coil driven with a butler matrix to utilize the eight most favorable birdcage modes. The parallel RF waveform design applied magnitude least-squares (MLS) criteria with an optimized k-space excitation trajectory to significantly improve profile uniformity compared to conventional least-squares (LS) designs.