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AbstractBOLD fMRI is widely applied in human neuroscience but is limited in its spatial specificity due to a cortical‐depth‐dependent venous bias. This reduces its localization specificity with respect to neuronal responses, a disadvantage for neuroscientific research. Here, we modified a submillimeter BOLD protocol to selectively reduce venous and tissue signal and increase cerebral blood volume weighting through a pulsed saturation scheme (dubbed Arterial Blood Contrast) at 7 T. Adding Arterial Blood Contrast on top of the existing BOLD contrast modulated the intracortical contrast. Isolating the Arterial Blood Contrast showed a response free of pial‐surface bias. The results suggest that Arterial Blood Contrast can modulate the typical fMRI spatial specificity, with important applications in in‐vivo neuroscience.

International audience

International audience; In this article we present the Littlewood-Paley theory and illustrate the effectiveness of this microlocal analysis tool in the study of partial differential equations, in a context which is the least technical possible. As we shall see below, the Littlewood-Paley theory provides a robust approach not only to the separate study of the various regimes of solutions to nonlinear partial differential equations, but also to the fine study of functional inequalities, and to make them accurate. 1. The Littlewood-Paley theory : a tool that has become indispensable The Littlewood-Paley theory is a localization procedure in the frequency space that, since about three decades ago, has established itself as a very powerful tool in harmonic analysis. The first goal of this text is to present it in a way as simple as possible 1. Its basic idea is contained in two fundamental inequalities known as Bernstein's inequalities, that describe some properties of functions whose Fourier transform have compact support. The first inequality says that, for a tempered distribution 2 in R d whose Fourier transform is supported in a annulus of size λ, to differentiate first and then take the L p norm is the same as to apply a homothety of ratio λ on the L p norm. In the L 2 setting this remarkable property is an easy consequence of the action of the Fourier transform on derivatives and of the Fourier-Plancherel formula. The proof in the case of general L p spaces uses Young's inequalities and the fact that the Fourier transform of a convolution is the product of the Fourier transforms. In the other hand, the second inequality tells us that, for such a distribution, the change from the L p norm to the L q norm, with q ≥ p ≥ 1, costs λ d 1 p − 1 q , which must be understood as a Sobolev embedding. It is proved like the first inequality, using Young's inequalities and the relation between the Fourier transform and the convolution product. Fourier Analysis is at the heart of the Littlewood-Paley theory, which has inspired a large number of my works. It was in conducting experiments on the propagation of heat that Joseph Fourier at the end of the 18th century opened the door to that theory, which was hugely expanded on the 20th century and intervenes in the majority of branches of Physics. In this theory having the name of its creator, one performs the frequency analyis of a function f of L 1 (R d) by the formula : f (ξ) = R d e −ix·ξ f (x) dx .

Microsatellites and minisatellites are two classes of tandem repeat sequences differing in their size, mutation processes, and chromosomal distribution. The boundary between the two classes is not defined. We have developed a convenient, hybridization-based human library screening procedure able to detect long CA-rich sequences. Analysis of cosmid clones derived from a chromosome 1 library show that cross-hybridizing sequences tested are imperfect CA-rich sequences, some of them showing a minisatellite organization. All but one of the 13 positive chromosome 1 clones studied are localized in chromosomal bands to which minisatellites have previously been assigned, such as the 1pter cluster. To test the applicability of the procedure to minisatellite detection on a larger scale, we then used a large-insert whole-genome PAC library. Altogether, 22 new minisatellites have been identified in positive PAC and cosmid clones and 20 of them are telomeric. Among the 42 positive PAC clones localized within the human genome by FISH and/or linkage analysis, 25 (60%) are assigned to a terminal band of the karyotype, 4 (9%) are juxtacentromeric, and 13 (31%) are interstitial. The localization of at least two of the interstitial PAC clones corresponds to previously characterized minisatellite-containing regions and/or ancestrally telomeric bands, in agreement with this minisatellite-like distribution. The data obtained are in close agreement with the parallel investigation of human genome sequence data and suggest that long human (CA)s are imperfect CA repeats belonging to the minisatellite class of sequences. This approach provides a new tool to efficiently target genomic clones originating from subtelomeric domains, from which minisatellite sequences can readily be obtained.[The sequence data described in this paper have been submitted to the EMBL data library under accession nos.AJ000377–AJ000383.]

Preoperative clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocols for gliomas, brain tumors with dismal outcomes due to their infiltrative properties, still rely on conventional structural MRI, which does not deliver information on tumor genotype and is limited in the delineation of diffuse gliomas. The GliMR COST action wants to raise awareness about the state of the art of advanced MRI techniques in gliomas and their possible clinical translation or lack thereof. This review describes current methods, limits, and applications of advanced MRI for the preoperative assessment of glioma, summarizing the level of clinical validation of different techniques. In this first part, we discuss dynamic susceptibility contrast and dynamic contrast‐enhanced MRI, arterial spin labeling, diffusion‐weighted MRI, vessel imaging, and magnetic resonance fingerprinting. The second part of this review addresses magnetic resonance spectroscopy, chemical exchange saturation transfer, susceptibility‐weighted imaging, MRI‐PET, MR elastography, and MR‐based radiomics applications.Evidence Level: 3Technical Efficacy: Stage 2

Objective This study aimed to show the simulation of the radiation exposure of the brain during perfusion measurements multi-detector-CT. Material and methods The effective dose and different organ doses were measured with thermoluminescent dosimeters in an Alderson-Rando phantom and compared with the data of a simulation program (CT-Expo V1.6) for varying scan protocols with different tube voltages (in kilovolts) and constant parameters for tube current (270 mAs), scan length (28.8 mm), scan time (40 seconds), slice thickness (24 × 1.2 mm), and number of scans (40) for multi-detector-CT perfusion measurements of the brain. Results The thermoluminescent dosimeter measurements yielded effective doses of 3.8 mSv (80 kV), 8.6 mSv (100 kV), 14.1 mSv (120 kV), and 22.2 mSv (140 kV). These values were in line with the data from the simulation program CT-Expo V1.6. The organ doses varied between 97 and 556 mGy (brain), 10.7 and 80.9 mGy (eye lens), 9.6 and 46 mGy (bone marrow), 1.2 and 6.7 mGy (thyroid gland), and 4.1 to 22.3 mGy (skin). The maximum local skin dose ranged from 355 mGy (80 kV) to 1855 mGy (140 kV) in the directly exposed part of the skin. Conclusions The radiation exposure during perfusion measurements of the brain is strongly dependent on the tube voltage and can vary widely even if the other exposure parameters remain constant. Maximum organ doses up to 556 mGy (brain) can be measured. Even if we never reached local organ doses that can cause a direct radiation injury, the review of the tube voltages implemented by the vendor is mandatory beside the limitation of the scanned area by clinical examination and the reduction of the number of scans. Simulation programs are a valuable tool for dose measurements.

AbstractBackgroundThe specificity of gradient echo (GE)-BOLD laminar fMRI activation profiles is degraded by intracortical veins that drain blood from lower to upper cortical layers, propagating activation signal in the same direction. This work describes an approach to obtain layer specific profiles by deconvolving the measured profiles with a physiological Point Spread Function (PSF).New MethodIt is shown that the PSF can be characterised by a TE-dependent peak to tail (p2t) value that is independent of cortical depth and can be estimated by simulation. An experimental estimation of individual p2t values and the sensitivity of the deconvolved profiles to variations in p2t is obtained using laminar data measured with a multi-echo 3D-FLASH sequence. These profiles are echo time dependent, but the underlying neuronal response is the same, allowing a data-based estimation of the PSF.ResultsThe deconvolved profiles are highly similar to the gold-standard obtained from extremely high resolution 3D-EPI data, for a range of p2t values of 5-9, which covers both the empirically determined value (7.1) and the value obtained by simulation (6.3).Comparison with Existing Method(s)Corrected profiles show a flatter shape across the cortex and a high level of similarity with the gold-standard, defined as a subset of profiles that are unaffected by intracortical veins.ConclusionsWe conclude that deconvolution is a robust approach for removing the effect of signal propagation through intracortical veins. This makes it possible to obtain profiles with high laminar specificity while benefitting from the higher sensitivity and efficiency of GE-BOLD sequences.

We define the class of sofic-Dyck shifts which extends the class of Markov-Dyck shifts introduced by Krieger and Matsumoto. The class of sofic-Dyck shifts is a particular class of shifts of sequences whose finite factors are unambiguous context-free languages. We show that it corresponds exactly to shifts of sequences whose set of factors is a visibly pushdown language. We give an expression of the zeta function of a sofic-Dyck shift which has a deterministic presentation.