phMRI: methodological considerations for mitigating potential confounding factors

Dr. Bourke is supported by a strategic research grant from Barts Charity (470/1700)

Mechanical and thermal behavior of a prototype support structure for a large silicon vertex detector (BCD)

The Bottom Collider Detector (BCD) has been proposed as a device to study large numbers of events containing B mesons. To identify secondary vertices in hadronic events it will employ the most ambitious silicon strip tracking detector proposed to-date. This report will discuss results from measurements on a first mechanical/thermal model of the vertex detector support structure. The model that was built and used for the studies described here is made of brass. Brass was used because it is readily available and easily assembled by soft soldering, and, for appropriate thicknesses, it will behave similarly to the beryllium that will be used in the actual detector. The trough was built to full scale with the reinforcement webbing and the cooling channels in place. There were no detector modules in place. We plan, however, to install modules in the trough in the future. The purpose of the model was to address two concerns that have arisen about the proposed structure of the detector. The first is whether or not the trough will be stable enough. The trough must be very light in weight yet have a high degree of rigidity. Because of the 3m length of the detector there is question as to the stiffness of the proposed trough. The main concern is that there will sagging or movement of the trough in the middle region. The second problem is the heat load. There will be a great deal of heat generated by the electronics attached to the detector modules. So the question arises as to whether or not the silicon detectors can be kept cool enough so that when the actual experiment is run the readings will be valid. The heat may also induce motion by differential expansion of support components. 26 figs

Reproducibility of pharmacological ASL using sequences from different vendors: implications for multicenter drug studies

The current study assesses the multicenter feasibility of pharmacological arterial spin labeling (ASL) by comparing a caffeine-induced relative cerebral blood flow decrease (%CBF↓) measured with two pseudo-continuous ASL sequences as provided by two major vendors. Twenty-two healthy volunteers were scanned twice with both a 3D spiral (GE) and a 2D EPI (Philips) sequence. The inter-session reproducibility was evaluated by comparisons of the mean and within-subject coefficient of variability (wsCV) of the %CBF↓, both for the total cerebral gray matter and on a voxel level. The %CBF↓ was larger when measured with the 3D spiral sequence (23.9 ± 5.9 %) than when measured with the 2D EPI sequence (19.2 ± 5.6 %) on a total gray matter level (p = 0.02), and on a voxel level in the posterior watershed area (p < 0.001). There was no difference between the gray matter wsCV of the 3D spiral (57.3 %) and 2D EPI sequence (66.7 %, p = 0.3), whereas on a voxel level, the wsCV was visibly different between the sequences. The observed differences between ASL sequences of both vendors can be explained by differences in the employed readout modules. These differences may seriously hamper multicenter pharmacological ASL, which strongly encourages standardization of ASL implementation