The impact of B1+ correction on MP2RAGE cortical T1 and apparent cortical thickness at 7T

Determination of cortical thickness using MRI has often been criticized due to the presence of various error sources. Specifically, anatomical MRI relying on T1 contrast may be unreliable due to spatially variable image contrast between gray matter (GM), white matter (WM) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Especially at ultra-high field (≥ 7T) MRI, transmit and receive B1 -related image inhomogeneities can hamper correct classification of tissue types. In the current paper, we demonstrate that residual B1+ (transmit) inhomogeneities in the T1 -weighted and quantitative T1 images using the MP2RAGE sequence at 7T lead to biases in cortical thickness measurements. As expected, post-hoc correction for the spatially varying B1+ profile reduced the apparent T1 values across the cortex in regions with low B1+, and slightly increased apparent T1 in regions with high B1+. As a result, improved contrast-to-noise ratio both at the GM-CSF and GM-WM boundaries can be observed leading to more accurate surface reconstructions and cortical thickness estimates. Overall, the changes in cortical thickness ranged between a 5% decrease to a 70% increase after B1+ correction, reducing the variance of cortical thickness values across the brain dramatically and increasing the comparability with normative data. More specifically, the cortical thickness estimates increased in regions characterized by a strong decrease of apparent T1 after B1+ correction in regions with low B1+ due to improved detection of the pial surface. The current results suggest that cortical thickness can be more accurately determined using MP2RAGE data at 7T if B1+ inhomogeneities are accounted for

Reproducibility and Reliability of Quantitative and Weighted T1 and T2∗ Mapping for Myelin-Based Cortical Parcellation at 7 Tesla

Different magnetic resonance (MR) parameters, such as R1 (= 1/T1) or T2*, have been used to visualize non-invasively the myelin distribution across the cortical sheet. Myelin contrast is consistently enhanced in the primary sensory and some higher order cortical areas (such as MT or the cingulate cortex), which renders it suitable for subject-specific anatomical cortical parcellation. However, no systematic comparison has been performed between the previously proposed MR parameters, i.e. the longitudinal and transversal relaxation values (or their ratios), for myelin mapping at 7 Tesla. In addition, usually these MR parameters are acquired in a non-quantitative manner (weighted parameters). Here, we evaluated the differences in ‘parcellability’, contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and inter- and intra-subject variability and reproducibility, respectively, between high-resolution cortical surface maps based on these weighted MR parameters and their quantitative counterparts in ten healthy subjects. All parameters were obtained in a similar acquisition time and possible transmit- or receive-biases were removed during post-processing. It was found that CNR per unit time and parcellability were lower for the transversal compared to the longitudinal relaxation parameters. Further, quantitative R1 was characterized by the lowest inter- and intra-subject coefficient of variation (5.53% and 1.63%, respectively), making R1 a better parameter to map the myelin distribution compared to the other parameters. Moreover, quantitative MRI approaches offer the advantage of absolute rather than relative characterization of the underlying biochemical composition of the tissue, allowing more reliable comparison within subjects and between healthy subjects and patients. Finally, we explored two parcellation methods (thresholding the MR parameter values vs. surface gradients of these values) to determine areal borders based on the cortical surface pattern. It is shown that both methods are partially observer-dependent, needing manual interaction (i.e. choice of threshold or connecting high gradient values) to provide unambiguous borders

Comparison of 3T and 7T ASL techniques for concurrent functional perfusion and BOLD studies

Arterial spin labeling (ASL) is the primary non-invasive MRI approach to measure baseline cerebral blood flow (CBF) in healthy subjects and patients. ASL also allows concurrent functional BOLD signal and CBF measurements, but the latter typically suffer from low contrast-to-noise (CNR) ratio. Ultra-high-field imaging significantly boosts BOLD signal CNR. However, it is contested whether also CBF CNR benefits from increasing magnetic field strength, especially given that technical challenges related to field inhomogeneities and power deposition constraints exist. Recently, we presented an optimized PASL technique that utilizes tr-FOCI inversion pulses and dielectric pads to overcome the temporal resolution limitations of previous 7T ASL implementations (Ivanov et al., in press; 2017). The primary goal of this study was to compare its performance to that of 3T ASL approaches - both pulsed ASL (PASL) and pseudo-continuous (pCASL) - concerning functional studies using simultaneous CBF and BOLD signal acquisition. To this aim, we investigated a wide range of parameters that can influence CBF and BOLD signal sensitivities: spatial resolution, labeling scheme, parallel imaging and echo time. We found that 7T ASL is superior in terms of CBF and BOLD temporal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and activation volume compared to all 3T ASL variants, in particular at high spatial resolution. Our results show that the advantages of 7T for ASL stem from increased image SNR, especially when parallel imaging is used. The gray matter baseline CBF was in good agreement for all 3T ASL variants, but a significantly lower value was obtained at 7T. The labeling scheme utilized was also found to significantly influence the measured perfusion territories CBF. In conclusion, a single-echo accelerated 7T PASL is recommended for high spatial and temporal resolution CBF and BOLD imaging, while a 3T dual-echo pCASL approach without parallel imaging may be preferred for low (i.e., 3mm isotropic and lower) resolution functional perfusion and BOLD applications

A scalable method to improve gray matter segmentation at ultra high field MRI

High-resolution (functional) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at ultra high magnetic fields (7 Tesla and above) enables researchers to study how anatomical and functional properties change within the cortical ribbon, along surfaces and across cortical depths. These studies require an accurate delineation of the gray matter ribbon, which often suffers from inclusion of blood vessels, dura mater and other non-brain tissue. Residual segmentation errors are commonly corrected by browsing the data slice-by-slice and manually changing labels. This task becomes increasingly laborious and prone to error at higher resolutions since both work and error scale with the number of voxels. Here we show that many mislabeled, non-brain voxels can be corrected more efficiently and semi-automatically by representing three-dimensional anatomical images using two-dimensional histograms. We propose both a uni-modal (based on first spatial derivative) and multi-modal (based on compositional data analysis) approach to this representation and quantify the benefits in 7 Tesla MRI data of nine volunteers. We present an openly accessible Python implementation of these approaches and demonstrate that editing cortical segmentations using two-dimensional histogram representations as an additional post-processing step aids existing algorithms and yields improved gray matter borders. By making our data and corresponding expert (ground truth) segmentations openly available, we facilitate future efforts to develop and test segmentation algorithms on this challenging type of data

Novel insights into hippocampal perfusion using high-resolution, multi-modal 7T MRI

We present a comprehensive study on the non-invasive measurement of hippocampal perfusion. Using high-resolution 7 Tesla arterial spin labelling data, we generated robust perfusion maps and observed significant variations in perfusion among hippocampal subfields, with CA1 exhibiting the lowest perfusion levels. Notably, these perfusion differences were robust and detectable even within five minutes and just fifty perfusion-weighted images per subject. To understand the underlying factors, we examined the influence of image quality metrics, various tissue microstructure and morphometry properties, macrovasculature and cytoarchitecture. We observed higher perfusion in regions located closer to arteries, demonstrating the influence of vascular proximity on hippocampal perfusion. Moreover, cytoarchitectonic features based on neuronal density differences appeared to correlate stronger with hippocampal perfusion than morphometric measures like gray matter thickness. These findings emphasize the interplay between microvasculature, macrovasculature, and metabolic demand in shaping hippocampal perfusion. Our study expands the current understanding of hippocampal physiology and its relevance to neurological disorders. By providing evidence of perfusion differences between hippocampal subfields, our findings have implications for diagnosis and potential therapeutic interventions. In conclusion, our study provides a valuable resource for extensively characterising hippocampal perfusion

Neurodegenerative and functional signatures of the cerebellar cortex in m.3243A > G patients

Mutations of the mitochondrial DNA are an important cause of inherited diseases that can severely affect the tissue’s homeostasis and integrity. The m.3243A > G mutation is the most commonly observed across mitochondrial disorders and is linked to multisystemic complications, including cognitive deficits. In line with in vitro experiments demonstrating the m.3243A > G’s negative impact on neuronal energy production and integrity, m.3243A > G patients show cerebral grey matter tissue changes. However, its impact on the most neuron dense, and therefore energy-consuming brain structure—the cerebellum—remains elusive. In this work, we used high-resolution structural and functional data acquired using 7 T MRI to characterize the neurodegenerative and functional signatures of the cerebellar cortex in m.3243A > G patients. Our results reveal altered tissue integrity within distinct clusters across the cerebellar cortex, apparent by their significantly reduced volume and longitudinal relaxation rate compared with healthy controls, indicating macroscopic atrophy and microstructural pathology. Spatial characterization reveals that these changes occur especially in regions related to the frontoparietal brain network that is involved in information processing and selective attention. In addition, based on resting-state functional MRI data, these clusters exhibit reduced functional connectivity to frontal and parietal cortical regions, especially in patients characterized by (i) a severe disease phenotype and (ii) reduced information-processing speed and attention control. Combined with our previous work, these results provide insight into the neuropathological changes and a solid base to guide longitudinal studies aimed to track disease progression

Comparison of GM segmentation results for MP2RAGE data.

<p>Same conventions as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0198335#pone.0198335.g006" target="_blank">Fig 6</a>) but with initial segmentation results obtained with CBS tools instead of SPM 12.</p

Segmentation performance scores MP2RAGE data set.

<p>The table shows the DICE (larger is better) and AVHD (less is better) for the initial CBS tools and FSL FAST GM segmentations as well as after additional masking, using either the gradient magnitude or the compositional data method.</p

Creation of 2D transfer functions with pre-defined shapes.

<p>(A) Intensity and (B) gradient magnitude values of of a brain extracted T1w-divided-by-PDw MRI image are represented in a 2D histogram. By moving widgets of pre-defined shape, e.g. a circle, over the (C) 2D histogram and (D) concurrent visualization of selected voxels on a 2D slice of brain, positions of different tissue types in the 2D histogram can be probed and transfer functions can be created. In this example, the different probe positions (yellow, orange and red circles) appear to contain different aspects of GM.</p

Availability of validation data and code.

<p>Validation data and scripts as well as segmentation software are all openly accessible by following the corresponding links for their repositories.</p