RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Ultra-high field MRI reveals mood-related circuit disturbances in depression: A comparison between 3-Tesla and 7-Tesla
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 459479
DO 10.1101/459479
A1 Laurel S Morris
A1 Prantik Kundu
A1 Sara Costi
A1 Abigail Collins
A1 Molly Schneider
A1 Gaurav Verma
A1 Priti Balchandani
A1 James W Murrough
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/11/12/459479.abstract
AB Ultra-high field 7-Tesla (7T) MRI has the potential to advance our understanding of neuropsychiatric disorders, including major depressive disorder (MDD). To date, few studies have quantified the advantage of resting state functional MRI (fMRI) at 7T compared to 3-Tesla (3T). We conducted a series of experiments that demonstrate the improvement in temporal signal-to-noise ratio (TSNR) of a multi-echo fMRI protocol with ultra-high field 7T, compared to 3T MRI in healthy controls (HC). We also directly tested the enhancement in ultra-high field 7T fMRI signal power by examining the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a small midbrain structure that is critical to the expected neuropathology of MDD but difficult to discern with standard 3T MRI. We demonstrate 200-300% improvement in TSNR and resting state functional connectivity coefficients provided by ultra-high field 7T fMRI compared to 3T, indicating enhanced power for detection of functional neural architecture. A multi-echo based acquisition protocol and signal denoising pipeline afforded greater gain in signal power at ultra-high field compared to classic acquisition and denoising pipelines. Furthermore, ultra-high field fMRI revealed mood-related neuro-circuit disturbances in patients with MDD compared to HC, which were not detectable with 3T fMRI. Ultra-high field 7T fMRI may provide an effective tool for studying functional neural architecture relevant to MDD and other neuropsychiatric disorders.