ABSTRACT:
Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain and spinal cord at 7 Tesla offers new opportunities to visualize structures with high spatial resolution and enhanced conspicuity, and to detect functional networks with greater sensitivity. This talk will highlight some of the technical challenges and recent advancements in structural and functional spinal cord imaging at 7 Tesla. For example, sub-millimeter in-plane fMRI acquisitions are desirable and achievable, but published studies in the spinal cord have had modest temporal resolution (>2 sec). Using a custom-built 7T pTx spine coil, we demonstrate sub-second and sub-millimeter cervical cord fMRI for the first time. Employing a 3D multi-shot sequence with appropriate phase corrections and NORDIC denoising, our data demonstrate temporal signal-to-noise ratios comparable to those of supra-second protocols, and we replicate bilateral functional connectivity patterns previously published in the cord. Realizing sub-second and sub-millimeter spinal cord fMRI opens new avenues of discovery that echo what has been reported through high spatiotemporal resolution brain fMRI, and the spinal cord remains one of the areas in which higher fields and resolution should have high impact.
 
BIO:
Robert Barry graduated from the University of Manitoba with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Engineering. While pursuing his graduate work, Robert saw an ad in the paper seeking participants for a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. He volunteered for this study and became fascinated with how researchers could use an MRI scanner to take pictures of his brain and infer what he was thinking. As his curiosity grew, Robert switched fields to pursue research in next-generation fMRI technology. In 2008, he completed a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping at Western University in London, Ontario. He then pursued postdoctoral studies at the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, in Nashville, Tennessee, and in 2014, was the lead author on a publication demonstrating the first conclusive evidence of resting state correlations in the spinal cord using fMRI. Robert relocated to the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging in 2016 to continue developing new technologies for spinal cord imaging at 7 Tesla.