Functional MPI (fMPI) of hypercapnia in rodent brain with MPI time-series imaging

MPI has been proposed as an alternative to fMRI for detecting cerebral blood volume (CBV) changes associated with brain activation due to potentially higher sensitivity, possibly enabling single-patient studies. In this work, we show preliminary neuroimaging data of CBV modulation with hypercapnia acquired in vivo on a rodent MPI scanner designed for time-series imaging. This continuously rotating 2D projection field free line imager enables time-series imaging with temporal resolution of up to 3 seconds. As a first demonstration of “fMPI”, we acquire time-series images of a rodent brain with 5 second temporal resolution with the animal undergoing alternating 3-minute periods of either hyper- or hypocapnia.  Image intensity changes from CBV modulation of the injected SPIONs concentration were detected with a CNR of up to 14 in brain pixels.   Int. J. Mag. Part. Imag. 6(2), Suppl. 1, 2020, Article ID: 2009009, DOI: 10.18416/IJMPI.2020.2009009