BOLD-fMRI seeks to map brain areas based on cortical activity. BOLD-fMRI is frequently used in studies of the brain to allow the identification and analysis of functional areas of the eloquent cortex (motor, language, audio and visual processing).
However, BOLD-fMRI techniques are not able to identify unexpected subject behaviour, with the associated risk of leading to an erroneous assessment.
Hence, a robust method to obtain estimates of brain networks through BOLF-fMRI has been a long-felt need.
The proposed technology allows to overcome the above-mentioned limitations, by providing means to obtain robust and spatially specific estimates of brain networks in a single patient.
Specifically, the proposed technique can reveal individual task scans where subjects did not comply with task instruction. This is a strong advantage over other known analysis models applied to fMRI data because unexpected subject behaviour (such as depicted in the Figure red rectangular shown below) leads to the derivation of wrong spatial activation maps. Retrospective analysis of task experiment scans can therefore reveal non-compliant task participation in circumstances in which task fMRI is currently in use for surgery planning.
Ultimately, the proposed technique enables reliable spatial brain mappings, which translate into more cost-effective and less invasive planning of epilepsy neurosurgery and brain tumour resection.
The proposed technique may therefore offer a non-invasive cost-efficient alternative to electric stimulation assessment of brain function for pre-operative planning in brain surgery.
Figure: Each row depicts task blocks (lines in four distinct colours in row one to four) of either foot, left hand, right hand or tongue movement, respectively. The neural activation time course of the spatial map (left column) with the highest correlation to a particular movement type is depicted as continuous blue line superimposed on the individual block movement timings. The activation time course in the red rectangle depicts subject 6 confusing left with right hand movement.