Transcript Lesson 12

M.Tech. (CS), Semester III, Course B50
Functional Brain Signal
Processing: EEG & fMRI
Lesson 12
Kaushik Majumdar
Indian Statistical Institute
Bangalore Center
[email protected]
fMRI Noise
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Scanner noise.
Thermal noise – heat generated in the coils
will alter resistance and current flow, which
will affect magnetization and will lead to
randomly fluctuating noise in the image.
Physiological noise – for example, ionic
currents from different parts of the body will
add noise to the image.
SNR in fMR Images
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If B0 is high transverse magnetic field M0 will
have to be high, the SNR will be high.
Voxel volume – the more it is the more
protons are there inside, so the stronger the
signal is. But point spread function (PSF) and
Gibbs phenomenon makes it more
complicated.
Total time for imaging.
SNR  M 0 VT
Buxton, 2009
Point Spread Function and Gibb’s
Phenomenon
T2* Time Effect
Since SNR  M 0 VT , if acquisition time is
increased the SNR will be improved. But we
also have T2*  T2  T1 .
So acquisition time is bounded above by T2*
relaxation time.
Poldrack et al., 2011
fMRI Artifacts: Scanner Spikes
Buxton, 2009
Ghost Image
Ghost images are
associated with EPI
and body
movements.
Poldrack et al., 2011
Distortion
Distortion happens due to magnetic inhomogeneity at the interface between
tissue and air. It happens during EPI (left) acquisition. The above image is
corrected (middle) by superposition with the T1 weighted image (right).
Poldrack et al., 2011
Slice Timing Artifact
Not very important
and not done in
most modern
acquisition
systems.
Poldrack et al., 2011
Slice Timing Correction
Poldrack et al., 2011
Motion Artifacts
Poldrack et al., 2011
Motion Correction
Poldrack et al., 2011
Motion Correction (cont)
Motion Artifact: Spin History Effect
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When the head moves, the protons that
move into a voxel from the neighboring
voxels have an excitation that is different
from that expected by the scanner, and the
reconstructed voxel will not accurately reflect
the tissue in the voxel.
Buxton, 2009
Heart Motion Artifact
Ionic Motion Artifacts
There are charged ions in motion all over our
body and they generate magnetic field, which
interferes with the MR imaging.
Off-Resonance Effect or Chemical
Shift Effect
H nuclei in fat (lipid) feel slightly different
magnetic field than those in water under the
same magnetic field strength B0. This is a
significant artifact at the boundary between
fat and water, but no much in the brain or the
grey matter. It is more in EPI than
conventional MR imaging.
Exercise
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Familiarize with the freely available MATLAB
based software package Statistical
Parametric Mapping (SPM):
http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/
Familiarize with the freely available software
package FSL (on Linux or Windows) at
http://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki/
References
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R. B. Buxton, Introduction to Functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 2e,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK,
2009.
R. A. Poldrack, J. A. Mumford and T. E.
Nichols, Handbook of Functional MRI Data
Analysis, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, New York, 2011.
THANK YOU
This lecture is available at http://www.isibang.ac.in/~kaushik