Volume 11, Issue 6 (November & December 2020)                   BCN 2020, 11(6): 737-752 | Back to browse issues page


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1- Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran.
2- Neuro Imaging and Analysis Group (NIAG), Research Center for Molecular and Cellular Imaging (RCMCI), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
3- Shefa Neuroscience Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
4- Centre of Precision Rehabilitation for Spinal Pain (CPR Spine), School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom.
Abstract:  
Introduction: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methods have been used to study sensorimotor processing in the spinal cord. However, these techniques confront unwanted noises to the measured signal from the physiological fluctuations. In the spinal cord imaging, most of the challenges are consequences of cardiac and respiratory movement artifacts that are considered as significant sources of noise, especially in the thoracolumbar region. In this study, we investigated the effect of each source of physiological noise and their contribution to the outcome of the analysis of the blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal in the human thoracolumbar spinal cord.
Methods: Fifteen young healthy male volunteers participated in the study, and pain stimuli were delivered on the L5 dermatome between the two malleoli. Respiratory and cardiac signals were recorded during the imaging session, and the generated respiration and cardiac regressors were included in the general linear model for quantification of the effect of each of them on the task-analysis results.  The sum of active voxels of the clusters was calculated in the spinal cord in three correction states (respiration correction only, cardiac correction only, and respiration and cardiac noise corrections) and analyzed with analysis of variance statistical test and receiver operating characteristic curve.
Results: The results illustrated that cardiac noise correction had an effective role in increasing the active voxels (Mean±SD= 23.46±9.46) compared to other noise correction methods. Cardiac effects were higher than other physiological noise sources
Conclusion: In summary, our results indicate great respiration effects on the lumbar and thoracolumbar spinal cord fMRI, and its contribution to the heartbeat effect can be a significant variable in the individual fMRI data analysis. Displacement of the spinal cord and the effects of this noise in the thoracolumbar and lumbar spinal cord fMRI results are significant and cannot be ignored.
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Type of Study: Original | Subject: Behavioral Neuroscience
Received: 2018/06/11 | Accepted: 2019/02/19 | Published: 2020/11/1

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