Low-field MRI: A report on the 2022 ISMRM workshop.

In March 2022, the first ISMRM Workshop on Low-Field MRI was held virtually. The goals of this workshop were to discuss recent low field MRI technology including hardware and software developments, novel methodology, new contrast mechanisms, as well as the clinical translation and dissemination of these systems. The virtual Workshop was attended by 368 registrants from 24 countries, and included 34 invited talks, 100 abstract presentations, 2 panel discussions, and 2 live scanner demonstrations. Here, we report on the scientific content of the Workshop and identify the key themes that emerged. The subject matter of the Workshop reflected the ongoing developments of low-field MRI as an accessible imaging modality that may expand the usage of MRI through cost reduction, portability, and ease of installation. Many talks in this Workshop addressed the use of computational power, efficient acquisitions, and contemporary hardware to overcome the SNR limitations associated with low field strength. Participants discussed the selection of appropriate clinical applications that leverage the unique capabilities of low-field MRI within traditional radiology practices, other point-of-care settings, and the broader community. The notion of "image quality" versus "information content" was also discussed, as images from low-field portable systems that are purpose-built for clinical decision-making may not replicate the current standard of clinical imaging. Speakers also described technical challenges and infrastructure challenges related to portability and widespread dissemination, and speculated about future directions for the field to improve the technology and establish clinical value.

Quantification of Prostate Cancer Metabolism Using 3D Multiecho bSSFP and Hyperpolarized [1-13 C] Pyruvate: Metabolism Differs Between Tumors of the Same Gleason Grade.

BACKGROUND: Three-dimensional (3D) multiecho balanced steady-state free precession (ME-bSSFP) has previously been demonstrated in preclinical hyperpolarized (HP) 13 C-MRI in vivo experiments, and it may be suitable for clinical metabolic imaging of prostate cancer (PCa). PURPOSE: To validate a signal simulation framework for the use of sequence parameter optimization. To demonstrate the feasibility of ME-bSSFP for HP 13 C-MRI in patients. To evaluate the metabolism in PCa measured by ME-bSSFP. STUDY TYPE: Retrospective single-center cohort study. PHANTOMS/POPULATION: Phantoms containing aqueous solutions of [1-13 C] lactate (2.3 M) and [13 C] urea (8 M). Eight patients (mean age 67 ± 6 years) with biopsy-confirmed Gleason 3 + 4 (n = 7) and 4 + 3 (n = 1) PCa. FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCES: 1 H MRI at 3 T with T2 -weighted turbo spin-echo sequence used for spatial localization and spoiled dual gradient-echo sequence used for B0 -field measurement. ME-bSSFP sequence for 13 C MR spectroscopic imaging with retrospective multipoint IDEAL metabolite separation. ASSESSMENT: The primary endpoint was the analysis of pyruvate-to-lactate conversion in PCa and healthy prostate regions of interest (ROIs) using model-free area under the curve (AUC) ratios and a one-directional kinetic model (kP ). The secondary objectives were to investigate the correlation between simulated and experimental ME-bSSFP metabolite signals for HP 13 C-MRI parameter optimization. STATISTICAL TESTS: Pearson correlation coefficients with 95% confidence intervals and paired t-tests. The level of statistical significance was set at P < 0.05. RESULTS: Strong correlations between simulated and empirical ME-bSSFP signals were found (r > 0.96). Therefore, the simulation framework was used for sequence optimization. Whole prostate metabolic HP 13 C-MRI, observing the conversion of pyruvate into lactate, with a temporal resolution of 6 seconds was demonstrated using ME-bSSFP. Both assessed metrics resulted in significant differences between PCa (mean ± SD) (AUC = 0.33 ± 012, kP  = 0.038 ± 0.014) and healthy (AUC = 0.15 ± 0.10, kP  = 0.011 ± 0.007) ROIs. DATA CONCLUSION: Metabolic HP 13 C-MRI in the prostate using ME-bSSFP allows for differentiation between aggressive PCa and healthy tissue. EVIDENCE LEVEL: 2 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 1.

Germany's journey toward 14 Tesla human magnetic resonance.

Multiple sites within Germany operate human MRI systems with magnetic fields either at 7 Tesla or 9.4 Tesla. In 2013, these sites formed a network to facilitate and harmonize the research being conducted at the different sites and make this technology available to a larger community of researchers and clinicians not only within Germany, but also worldwide. The German Ultrahigh Field Imaging (GUFI) network has defined a strategic goal to establish a 14 Tesla whole-body human MRI system as a national research resource in Germany as the next progression in magnetic field strength. This paper summarizes the history of this initiative, the current status, the motivation for pursuing MR imaging and spectroscopy at such a high magnetic field strength, and the technical and funding challenges involved. It focuses on the scientific and science policy process from the perspective in Germany, and is not intended to be a comprehensive systematic review of the benefits and technical challenges of higher field strengths.

Cardiovascular brain impulses in Alzheimer's disease.

Accumulation of amyloid-ß is a key neuropathological feature in brain of Alzheimer's disease patients. Alterations in cerebral haemodynamics, such as arterial impulse propagation driving the (peri)vascular CSF flux, predict future Alzheimer's disease progression. We now present a non-invasive method to quantify the three-dimensional propagation of cardiovascular impulses in human brain using ultrafast 10 Hz magnetic resonance encephalography. This technique revealed spatio-temporal abnormalities in impulse propagation in Alzheimer's disease. The arrival latency and propagation speed both differed in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Our mapping of arterial territories revealed Alzheimer's disease-specific modifications, including reversed impulse propagation around the hippocampi and in parietal cortical areas. The findings imply that pervasive abnormality in (peri)vascular CSF impulse propagation compromises vascular impulse propagation and subsequently glymphatic brain clearance of amyloid-ß in Alzheimer's disease.

[Low-field magnetic resonance imaging : Just less expensive or completely different?] / Magnetresonanztomographie bei niedrigeren Feldstärken : Einfach nur kostengünstiger oder ganz anders?

Over the years the development of field strength in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has continued to increase from the low-field systems in the early years (0.2-0.5 T) to 1.5 T to 3 T to 7 T and more. In the last 2 years, there has been a renewed interest in MRI at lower fields, mainly driven by the development of "dry" superconductive magnets. The following article demonstrates that this renewed interest for lower fields is not a déjà vu purely driven by economic needs. The field strength appears to be from yesterday, but the combination with the tremendous improvements and innovations of all relevant components-gradients, radiofrequency system and especially new algorithms including the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-allow the realization of diagnostically adequate MRI without compromise in patient throughput and efficiency. In addition to the lower field, there are also some inherent advantages, e.g., for MRI of the lung and of metallic implants and especially for interventional MRI. It has already been shown that many of the devices used for interventional procedures (catheters, biopsy needles) can be used at lower fields without costly modifications. In addition, low-field MRI also allows the robust use of highly efficient sampling methods like spiral MRI. It is therefore safe to predict that low-field MRI is not only a cost-efficient compromise, but has the potential to open up new fields of application.

The ventral pathway of the human brain: A continuous association tract system.

The brain hemispheres can be divided into an upper dorsal and a lower ventral system. Each system consists of distinct cortical regions connected via long association tracts. The tracts cross the central sulcus or the limen insulae to connect the frontal lobe with the posterior brain. The dorsal stream is associated with sensorimotor mapping. The ventral stream serves structural analysis and semantics in different domains, as visual, acoustic or space processing. How does the prefrontal cortex, regarded as the platform for the highest level of integration, incorporate information from these different domains? In the current view, the ventral pathway consists of several separate tracts, related to different modalities. Originally the assumption was that the ventral path is a continuum, covering all modalities. The latter would imply a very different anatomical basis for cognitive and clinical models of processing. To further define the ventral connections, we used cutting-edge in vivo global tractography on high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data from 100 normal subjects from the human connectome project and ex vivo preparation of fiber bundles in the extreme capsule of 8 humans using the Klingler technique. Our data showed that ventral stream tracts, traversing through the extreme capsule, form a continuous band of fibers that fan out anteriorly to the prefrontal cortex, and posteriorly to temporal, occipital and parietal cortical regions. Introduction of additional volumes of interest in temporal and occipital lobes differentiated between the inferior fronto-occipital fascicle (IFOF) and uncinate fascicle (UF). Unequivocally, in both experiments, in all subjects a connection between the inferior frontal and middle-to-posterior temporal cortical region, otherwise known as the temporo-frontal extreme capsule fascicle (ECF) from nonhuman primate brain-tracing experiments was identified. In the human brain, this tract connects the language domains of "Broca's area" and "Wernicke's area". The differentiation in the three tracts, IFOF, UF and ECF seems arbitrary, all three pass through the extreme capsule. Our data show that the ventral pathway represents a continuum. The three tracts merge seamlessly and streamlines showed considerable overlap in their anterior and posterior course. Terminal maps identified prefrontal cortex in the frontal lobe and association cortex in temporal, occipital and parietal lobes as streamline endings. This anatomical substrate potentially facilitates the prefrontal cortex to integrate information across different domains and modalities.

Strategies to improve intratrain prospective motion correction for turbo spin-echo sequences with constant flip angles.

PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of prospective motion correction on turbo spin echo sequences and optimize motion correction approaches, mitigating signal dropout artifacts caused by the imperfections of motion tracking data. METHODS: Signal dropout artifacts caused by undesired phase deviations introduced by tracking errors are analyzed theoretically. To reduce the adverse effect of such deviations, two approaches are proposed: (1) freezing the correction for example, for even-numbered or higher number of echoes and (2) shifting the correction event prior to the left crusher gradient preceding the refocusing pulse. A comprehensive analysis is presented, including both signal simulations and experimental verifications in phantoms and in vivo. Performance of the proposed approach is validated in two healthy volunteers imaged under two types of motion conditions simulating inadvertent fast motions associated with discomfort and continuous large motions. RESULTS: The results show that the proposed optimization is able to efficiently correct for the motion artifacts and at the same time avoid signal dropout artifacts. Specifically, performing correction every 4th echo prior to the left crusher gradient was shown to improve image quality. CONCLUSION: An optimization approach is proposed to exploit the potential of external tracking for intra-echo-train motion artifact correction for turbo spin echo sequences.

Improving the sensitivity of spin-echo fMRI at 3T by highly accelerated acquisitions.

PURPOSE: Spin-echo (SE) functional MRI (fMRI) can be highly advantageous compared to gradient-echo (GE) fMRI with respect to magnetic field-inhomogeneity artifacts. However, at 3T, the majority of blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI experiments are performed using T2∗ -weighted GE sequences because of their superior sensitivity compared to SE-fMRI. The presented SE implementation of a highly accelerated GE pulse sequence therefore aims to improve the sensitivity of SE-fMRI while profiting from a reduction of susceptibility-induced signal dropout. METHODS: Spin-echo MR encephalography (SE-MREG) is compared with the more conventionally used spin-echo echo-planar imaging (SE-EPI) and spin-echo simultaneous multislice (SE-SMS) at 3T in terms of capability to detect neuronal activations and resting-state functional connectivity. For activation analysis, healthy subjects underwent consecutive SE-MREG (pulse repetition time [TR] = 0.25 seconds), SE-SMS (TR = 1.3 seconds), and SE-EPI (TR = 4.4 seconds) scans in pseudorandomized order applied to a visual block design paradigm for generation of t-statistics maps. For the investigation of functional connectivity, additional resting-state data were acquired for 5 minutes and a seed-based correlation analysis using Stanford's FIND (Functional Imaging in Neuropsychiatric Disorders) atlas was performed. RESULTS: The increased sampling rate of SE-MREG relative to SE-SMS and SE-EPI improves the sensitivity to detect BOLD activation by 33% and 54%, respectively, and increases the capability to extract resting-state networks. Compared with a brain region that is not affected by magnetic field inhomogeneities, SE-MREG shows 2.5 times higher relative signal strength than GE-MREG in mesial temporal structures. CONCLUSION: SE-MREG offers a viable possibility for whole-brain fMRI with consideration of brain regions that are affected by strong susceptibility-induced magnetic field gradients.

Trading off spatio-temporal properties in 3D high-speed fMRI using interleaved stack-of-spirals trajectories.

PURPOSE: Highly undersampled acquisitions have been proposed to push the limits of temporal resolution in functional MRI. This contribution is aimed at identifying parameter sets that let the user trade-off between ultra-high temporal resolution and spatial signal quality by varying the sampling densities. The proposed method maintains the synergies of a temporal resolution that enables direct filtering of physiological artifacts for highest statistical power, and 3D read-outs with optimal use of encoding capabilities of multi-coil arrays for efficient sampling and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). METHODS: One- to four-shot interleaved spherical stack-of-spiral trajectories with repetition times from 96 to 352 ms at a nominal resolution of 3 mm using different sampling densities were compared for image quality and temporal SNR (tSNR). The one- and three-shot trajectories were employed in a resting state study for functional characterization. RESULTS: Compared to a previously described single-shot trajectory, denser sampled trajectories of the same type are shown to be less prone to blurring and off-resonance vulnerability that appear in addition to the variable density artifacts of the point spread function. While the multi-shot trajectories lead to a decrease in tSNR efficiency, the high SNR due to the 3D read-out, combined with notable increases in image quality, leads to superior overall results of the three-shot interleaved stack of spirals. A resting state analysis of 15 subjects shows significantly improved functional sensitivity in areas of high off-resonance gradients. CONCLUSION: Mild variable-density sampling leads to excellent tSNR behavior and no increased off-resonance vulnerability, and is suggested unless maximum temporal resolution is sought.

Three-dimensional spatially resolved phase graph framework.

PURPOSE: An open-source spatially resolved phase graph framework is proposed for simulating arbitrary pulse sequences in the presence of piece-wise constant gradients with arbitrary orientations in three dimensions. It generalizes the extended phase graph algorithm for analysis of nonperiodic sequences while preserving its efficiency, and is able to estimate the signal modulation in the 3D spatial domain. METHODS: The framework extends the recursive magnetization-evolution algorithm to account for anisotropic diffusion and exploits a novel 3D k-space grid-merging method to balance the computational effort and memory requirements against acceptable simulation errors. A new postsimulation module is proposed to track and visualize the signal evolution both in the k-space and in the image domain, which can be used for simulating image artifacts or finding frequency-response profiles. To illustrate the developed technique, three examples are presented: (1) fast off-resonance calculation for dictionary building in MR fingerprinting, (2) validation of a steady-state sequence with quasi-isotropic diffusion weighting, and (3) investigation of the magnetization evolution in PRESS-based spectroscopic imaging. RESULTS: The grid-merging algorithm of the proposed framework demonstrates high calculation efficiency exemplified by frequency-response simulation of pseudo steady-state or diffusion-weighted steady-state sequences. It further helps to visualize the signal evolution in PRESS-based sequences. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed simulation framework has been validated based on several different example applications for analyzing signal evolution in the frequency and spatial domain.

Frequency-adjustable magnetic field probes.

PURPOSE: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance field probes provide exciting possibilities for enhancing MR image quality by allowing for calibration of k-space trajectories and/or dynamic measurement of local field changes. The purpose of this study is to design and build field probes, which are easier to manufacture and more flexible to use than existing probes. METHODS: A new manufacturing method is presented based on light-activated resin to encase the coil assembly and the 1H sample. This method allows for realizing field probes with tightly integrated orthogonal coils, whereby the local resonance frequency of protons can be adjusted during the MR experiment, by applying a DC current to the integrated B0 -field modification coil. RESULTS: The apparent field probe position in a gradient echo experiment was shifted within the field of view by changing its Larmor frequency using an integrated micro-coil with 5.5 windings. The measured frequency modulation induced by the B0 -field modification coil was 113 Hz/mA. The probe was tested with currents up to 100 mA. The DC current in the local field modification coil did not introduce visible artifacts in the MR images. Furthermore selective off-resonant excitation of the new field probes at 2 kHz above the main RF frequency was demonstrated. Gradient impulse response functions measured with a traditional and proposed probe show similar gradient imperfections. CONCLUSIONS: The presented approach opens up new possibilities for concurrent field monitoring during MR experiments using standard RF capabilities of clinical scanners.

Localized singlet-filtered MRS in vivo.

MR is a prominent technology to investigate diseases, with millions of clinical procedures performed every year. Metabolic dysfunction is one common aspect associated with many diseases. Thus, understanding and monitoring metabolic changes is essential to develop cures for many illnesses, including for example cancer and neurodegeneration. MR methodologies are especially suited to study endogenous metabolites and processes within an organism in vivo, which has led to many insights about physiological functions. Advancing metabolic MR techniques is therefore key to further understand physiological processes. Here, we introduce an approach based on nuclear spin singlet states to specifically filter metabolic signals and particularly show that singlet-filtered glutamate can be observed distinctly in the hippocampus of a living mouse in vivo. This development opens opportunities to make use of the singlet spin phenomenon in vivo and besides its use as a filter to provide scope for new contrast agents.

High field parahydrogen induced polarization of succinate and phospholactate.

The signal enhancement provided by the hyperpolarization of nuclear spins of metabolites is a promising technique for diagnostic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). To date, most 13C-contrast agents are hyperpolarized utilizing a complex or cost-intensive polarizer. Recently, the in situ parahydrogen-induced 13C hyperpolarization was demonstrated. Hydrogenation, spin order transfer (SOT) by a pulsed NMR sequence, in vivo administration, and detection was achieved within the magnet bore of a 7 Tesla MRI system. So far, the hyperpolarization of the xenobiotic molecule 1-13C-hydroxyethylpropionate (HEP) and the biomolecule 1-13C-succinate (SUC) through the PH-INEPT+ sequence and a SOT scheme proposed by Goldman et al., respectively, was shown. Here, we investigate further the hyperpolarization of SUC at 7 Tesla and study the performance of two additional SOT sequences. Moreover, we present first results of the hyperpolarization at high magnetic field of 1-13C-phospholactate (PLAC), a derivate to obtain the metabolite lactate, employing the PH-INEPT+ sequence. For SUC and PLAC, 13C polarizations of about 1-2% were achieved within seconds and with minimal equipment. Effects that potentially may explain loss of 13C polarization have been identified, i.e. low hydrogenation yield, fast T1/T2 relaxation and the rarely considered 13C isotope labeling effect.

Selective excitation of hydrogen doubles the yield and improves the robustness of parahydrogen-induced polarization of low-γ nuclei.

We describe a new method for pulsed spin order transfer of parahydrogen-induced polarization (PHIP) that enables high polarization in incompletely 2H-labeled molecules by exciting only the desired protons in a frequency-selective manner. This way, the effect of selected J-couplings is suspended. Experimentally 1.25% 13C polarization were obtained for 1-13C-ethyl pyruvate and 50% pH2 at 9.4 Tesla.

Pulse-Programmable Magnetic Field Sweeping of Parahydrogen-Induced Polarization by Side Arm Hydrogenation.

Among the hyperpolarization techniques geared toward in vivo magnetic resonance imaging, parahydrogen-induced polarization (PHIP) shows promise due to its low cost and fast speed of contrast agent preparation. The synthesis of 13C-labeled, unsaturated precursors to perform PHIP by side arm hydrogenation has recently opened new possibilities for metabolic imaging owing to the biological compatibility of the reaction products, although the polarization transfer between the parahydrogen-derived protons and the 13C heteronucleus must yet be better understood, characterized, and eventually optimized. In this realm, a new experimental strategy incorporating pulse-programmable magnetic field sweeping and in situ detection has been developed. The approach is evaluated by measuring the 13C polarization of ethyl acetate-1-13C, i.e., the product of pairwise addition of parahydrogen to vinyl acetate-1-13C, resulting from zero-crossing magnetic field ramps of various durations, amplitudes, and step sizes. The results demonstrate (i) the profound effect these parameters have on the 1H to 13C polarization transfer efficiency and (ii) the high reproducibility of the technique.

Time-domain principal component reconstruction (tPCR): A more efficient and stable iterative reconstruction framework for non-Cartesian functional MRI.

PURPOSE: To improve the reconstruction efficiency (i.e., computational load) and stability of iterative reconstruction for non-Cartesian fMRI when using high undersampling rates and/or in the presence of strong off-resonance effects. THEORY AND METHODS: The magnetic resonance encephalography (MREG) sequence with 3D non-Cartesian trajectory and 0.1s repetition time (TR) was applied to acquire fMRI datasets. Different from a conventional time-point-by-time-point sequential reconstruction (SR), the proposed time-domain principal component reconstruction (tPCR) performs three steps: (1) decomposing the k-t-space fMRI datasets into time-domain principal component space using singular value decomposition, (2) reconstructing each principal component with redistributed computation power according to their weights, and (3) combining the reconstructed principal components back to image-t-space. The comparison of reconstruction accuracy was performed by simulation experiments and then verified in real fMRI data. RESULTS: The simulation experiments showed that the proposed tPCR was able to significantly reduce reconstruction errors, and subsequent functional activation errors, relative to SR at identical computational cost. Alternatively, at fixed reconstruction accuracy, computation time was greatly reduced. The improved performance was particularly obvious for L1-norm nonlinear reconstructions relative to L2-norm linear reconstructions and robust to different regularization strength, undersampling rates, and off-resonance effects intensity. By examining activation maps, tPCR was also found to give similar improvements in real fMRI experiments. CONCLUSION: The proposed proof-of-concept tPCR framework could improve (1) the reconstruction efficiency of iterative reconstruction, and (2) the reconstruction stability especially for nonlinear reconstructions. As a practical consideration, the improved reconstruction speed promotes the application of highly undersampled non-Cartesian fast fMRI.

Dynamic 2D and 3D mapping of hyperpolarized pyruvate to lactate conversion in vivo with efficient multi-echo balanced steady-state free precession at 3 T.

The aim of this study was to acquire the transient MRI signal of hyperpolarized tracers and their metabolites efficiently, for which specialized imaging sequences are required. In this work, a multi-echo balanced steady-state free precession (me-bSSFP) sequence with Iterative Decomposition with Echo Asymmetry and Least squares estimation (IDEAL) reconstruction was implemented on a clinical 3 T positron-emission tomography/MRI system for fast 2D and 3D metabolic imaging. Simulations were conducted to obtain signal-efficient sequence protocols for the metabolic imaging of hyperpolarized biomolecules. The sequence was applied in vitro and in vivo for probing the enzymatic exchange of hyperpolarized [1-13 C]pyruvate and [1-13 C]lactate. Chemical shift resolution was achieved using a least-square, iterative chemical species separation algorithm in the reconstruction. In vitro, metabolic conversion rate measurements from me-bSSFP were compared with NMR spectroscopy and free induction decay-chemical shift imaging (FID-CSI). In vivo, a rat MAT-B-III tumor model was imaged with me-bSSFP and FID-CSI. 2D metabolite maps of [1-13 C]pyruvate and [1-13 C]lactate acquired with me-bSSFP showed the same spatial distributions as FID-CSI. The pyruvate-lactate conversion kinetics measured with me-bSSFP and NMR corresponded well. Dynamic 2D metabolite mapping with me-bSSFP enabled the acquisition of up to 420 time frames (scan time: 180-350 ms/frame) before the hyperpolarized [1-13 C]pyruvate was relaxed below noise level. 3D metabolite mapping with a large field of view (180 × 180 × 48 mm3 ) and high spatial resolution (5.6 × 5.6 × 2 mm3 ) was conducted with me-bSSFP in a scan time of 8.2 seconds. It was concluded that Me-bSSFP improves the spatial and temporal resolution for metabolic imaging of hyperpolarized [1-13 C]pyruvate and [1-13 C]lactate compared with either of the FID-CSI or EPSI methods reported at 3 T, providing new possibilities for clinical and preclinical applications.

Hippocampal and medial prefrontal cortical volume is associated with overnight declarative memory consolidation independent of specific sleep oscillations.

The current study was designed to further clarify the influence of brain morphology, sleep oscillatory activity and age on memory consolidation. Specifically, we hypothesized, that a smaller volume of hippocampus, parahippocampal and medial prefrontal cortex negatively impacts declarative, but not procedural, memory consolidation. Explorative analyses were conducted to demonstrate whether a decrease in slow-wave activity negatively impacts declarative memory consolidation, and whether these factors mediate age effects on memory consolidation. Thirty-eight healthy participants underwent an acquisition session in the evening and a retrieval session in the morning after night-time sleep with polysomnographic monitoring. Declarative memory was assessed with the paired-associate word list task, while procedural memory was tested using the mirror-tracing task. All participants underwent high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging. Participants with smaller hippocampal, parahippocampal and medial prefrontal cortex volumes displayed a reduced overnight declarative, but not procedural memory consolidation. Mediation analyses showed significant age effects on overnight declarative memory consolidation, but no significant mediation effects of brain morphology on this association. Further mediation analyses showed that the effects of age and brain morphology on overnight declarative memory consolidation were not mediated by polysomnographic variables or sleep electroencephalogram spectral power variables. Thus, the results suggest that the association between age, specific brain area volume and overnight memory consolidation is highly relevant, but does not necessarily depend on slow-wave sleep as previously conceptualized.

Carotid geometry is an independent predictor of wall thickness - a 3D cardiovascular magnetic resonance study in patients with high cardiovascular risk.

BACKGROUND: The posterior wall of the proximal internal carotid artery (ICA) is the predilection site for the development of stenosis. To optimally prevent stroke, identification of new risk factors for plaque progression is of high interest. Therefore, we studied the impact of carotid geometry and wall shear stress on cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR)-depicted wall thickness in the ICA of patients with high cardiovascular disease risk. METHODS: One hundred twenty-one consecutive patients ≥50 years with hypertension, ≥1 additional cardiovascular risk factor and ICA plaque ≥1.5 mm thickness and < 50% stenosis were prospectively included. High-resolution 3D-multi-contrast (time of flight, T1, T2, proton density) and 4D flow CMR were performed for the assessment of morphological (bifurcation angle, ICA/common carotid artery (CCA) diameter ratio, tortuosity, and wall thickness) and hemodynamic parameters (absolute/systolic wall shear stress (WSS), oscillatory shear index (OSI)) in 242 carotid bifurcations. RESULTS: We found lower absolute/systolic WSS, higher OSI and increased wall thickness in the posterior compared to the anterior wall of the ICA bulb (p < 0.001), whereas this correlation disappeared in ≥10% stenosis. Higher carotid tortuosity (regression coefficient = 0.764; p < 0.001) and lower ICA/CCA diameter ratio (regression coefficient = - 0.302; p < 0.001) were independent predictors of increased wall thickness even after adjustment for cardiovascular risk factors. This association was not found for bifurcation angle, WSS or OSI in multivariate regression analysis. CONCLUSIONS: High carotid tortuosity and low ICA diameter were independent predictors for wall thickness of the ICA bulb in this cross-sectional study, whereas this association was not present for WSS or OSI. Thus, consideration of geometric parameters of the carotid bifurcation could be helpful to identify patients at increased risk of carotid plaque generation. However, this association and the potential benefit of WSS measurement need to be further explored in a longitudinal study.

The potential of MR-Encephalography for BCI/Neurofeedback applications with high temporal resolution.

Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rt-fMRI) enables the update of various brain-activity measures during an ongoing experiment as soon as a new brain volume is acquired. However, the recorded Blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal also contains physiological artifacts such as breathing and heartbeat, which potentially cause misleading false positive effects especially problematic in brain-computer interface (BCI) and neurofeedback (NF) setups. The low temporal resolution of echo planar imaging (EPI) sequences (which is in the range of seconds) prevents a proper separation of these artifacts from the BOLD signal. MR-Encephalography (MREG) has been shown to provide the high temporal resolution required to unalias and correct for physiological fluctuations and leads to increased specificity and sensitivity for mapping task-based activation and functional connectivity as well as for detecting dynamic changes in connectivity over time. By comparing a simultaneous multislice echo planar imaging (SMS-EPI) sequence and an MREG sequence using the same nominal spatial resolution in an offline analysis for three different experimental fMRI paradigms (perception of house and face stimuli, motor imagery, Stroop task), the potential of this novel technique for future BCI and NF applications was investigated. First, adapted general linear model pre-whitening which accounts for the high temporal resolution in MREG was implemented to calculate proper statistical results and be able to compare these with the SMS-EPI sequence. Furthermore, the respiration- and cardiac pulsation-related signals were successfully separated from the MREG signal using independent component analysis which were then included as regressors for a GLM analysis. Only the MREG sequence allowed to clearly separate cardiac pulsation and respiration components from the signal time course. It could be shown that these components highly correlate with the recorded respiration and cardiac pulsation signals using a respiratory belt and fingertip pulse plethysmograph. Temporal signal-to-noise ratios of SMS-EPI and MREG were comparable. Functional connectivity analysis using partial correlation showed a reduced standard error in MREG compared to SMS-EPI. Also, direct time course comparisons by down-sampling the MREG signal to the SMS-EPI temporal resolution showed lower variance in MREG. In general, we show that the higher temporal resolution is beneficial for fMRI time course modeling and this aspect can be exploited in offline application but also, is especially attractive, for real-time BCI and NF applications.