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Research Paper | Radiology and Medical Imaging Sciences | India | Volume 12 Issue 9, September 2023 | Rating: 5.4 / 10
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging - An Insight into the Imaging Trends
Abstract: The application of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) has passed through various stages of evolution ranging from research-based imaging to clinical imaging techniques. As a primary indication, it is commonly used for pre-surgical mapping of functional areas around the tumour and areas of resection. In the early 1990s, Ogawa et.al initially described the Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) imaging technique with animal studies. In recent years, the methodologies of visualizing the human brain have passed through an enormous evolution. Whenever there is a stimulation of neural activity, there is an increase in blood flow by capillaries adjacent to the region which reflects the increased synaptic activity in that specific area. During this process, the cerebral blood flow (CBF) and cerebral blood volume (CBV) are increased with a collateral increase in oxygen than necessary. The difference in susceptibilities between oxy and de-oxy hemoglobins can be identified by using MRI with their different susceptibility effects. This imaging approach by MRI is called BOLD imaging. The functional MRI can be performed in either of two ways, task dependent fMRI and resting state fMRI. The tasks vary depending on motor or language with dedicated adult and pediatric protocols. The acquired images were subjected to various post-processing steps like image realignment and motion correction, Coregistration, spatial normalization and smoothening, statistical analysis, and activation map generation. The usual clinical applications of fMRI include language lateralization, brain plasticity evaluation, and motor region evaluation. Though there are some technical challenges, fMRI is considered a powerful imaging tool to visualize the neural correlation of subject behaviour in higher resolution non-invasively.
Keywords: Functional MRI, Post Processing in fMRI, fMRI
Edition: Volume 12 Issue 9, September 2023,
Pages: 1662 - 1678