The Functional Magnetic Resonance Brain Imaging Program (FMR-BIP) is located within the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU) of the Department of Psychiatry. Its primary goal is to perform functional brain imaging studies collaboratively with the Department of Radiology utilizing the new 3 Tesla Phillips Achieva scanner and the CNRU experimental image capture and analysis system. In addition, the FMR-BIP works collaboratively with other laboratories within the Psychiatry Department to serve mutual research interests. The FMR-BIP collaborates across the Neuroscience Consortium with investigators in the Departments of Neurology, Anatomy, Psychology, as well as GCRC investigators to further develop brain imaging expertise at UVM. This is a collaborative effort between the departments of Psychiatry and Radiology. The functional imaging experimental and analysis expertise reside in CNRU-Psychiatry. Technical personnel necessary to operate the imaging program including MR physicist, fMRI radiologist, and technicians are employed by the Department of Radiology in the College of Medicine.
System Configuration
Magnet Control and Stimulus Delivery System. This equipment resides in the MRI control and magnet rooms. This equipment consists of two computers one of which it is designed for controlling the magnet, triggering the magnet at the appropriate time, and capturing images. The second computer is yoked to the first one and allows control of subject stimuli (both visual and auditory). We use the Eloquence system by Invivo. This is a system which contains the components for experimental control as well as visual and auditory stimulus delivery systems.
Eloquence contains a comprehensive and fully integrated set of hardware and software tools that provides the user with presentation, behavioral data collection and analysis for functional MRI (fMRI) assessment. The EMC shielded console includes dual computers with software for experimental control, subject management and functional analysis. The computers generates, presents, analyze and archive functional fMRI experiments while maintaining millisecond level experiment control. This system utilizes E-Prime software for fMRI applications with pre-programmed fMRI experiments including visual fields, motor, language, and memory responses in periodic and/or event-related paradigms as well as experimental control software.
The In-Magnet Module includes a Patient Video Display Hood which consists of a 15" diagonal LCD, 1024 X 768 resolution w/mount to Phased Array Head Coil, subject headphones consisting of electrostatic stereo headphones embedded in passive noise reduction earphones, 10 key Button Response Unit, radio frequency (RF) detector and console enabled TTL trigger for pulse-based synchronization, subject microphone, and set of MR -compatible, corrective lenses for subjects ( + 1-7 diopter), and a fiber optic joystick.
Phased Array Head Coil (High Resolution Head Array). The Phased Array High Resolution Head Coil is an integral part of the complete system and was designed specifically for fMRI applications
Image Storage System. The large amount of data produced by even a single run of a subject for an fMRI experiment requires a large amount of redundant storage (approximately 700 MB per run). We utilize a 3TB RAID server which allows a large amount of storage (approximately 3 TB) with redundancy in case of disk failure. The GCRC information systems manager hosts and manage the RAID server.
Image Analysis. We have 2 Dell 670 dual processor Xeon workstations to take images off the RAID server and do post-processing and image analysis with BrainVoyager fMRI analysis software.
BrainVoyager QX is a software package for the analysis and visualization of functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging data sets. BrainVoyager QX has been completely programmed in C++ with optimized and highly efficient statistical, numerical, and image processing routines. Features include:
Extremely fast and highly optimized 2D and 3D analysis and visualization routines
Volume and cortex-based hypothesis-driven statistical data analysis (i.e. GLM) including conjunction and random effects analysis
Dynamic statistical thresholding using the False Discovery Rate (FDR) approach
Multi-subject Volume-of-Interest (VOI) and surface Patch-of-Interest (POI) analysis
Volume and cortex-based data-driven analysis using Independent Component Analysis (ICA)
Advanced methods for automatic brain segmentation, surface reconstruction, cortex inflation and flattening
Cortex-based inter-subject alignment based on gyral / sulcal pattern of individual brains going beyond Talairach space
Analysis of Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) data including combined visualization with structural and functional MRI
Creation ("seeding") and visualization of EEG / MEG multiple dipole models in combination with the powerful BESA 2000 program
Integration of volume and surface rendering with powerful tools for the creation of high-quality figures and movies
Multi-processor support and an open architecture with documented file formats
Multiplatform scripting support allows to analyze the data from many subjects in batch mode; the available scripting and GUI tools make it also possible to extent BrainVoyager QX by enabling rapid application adaptation tailoring the program to specific needs
The Windows version also supports COM-based interfaces, which can be accessed with all major computer languages (i.e. C/C++, VB, Java) as well as MATLAB.
