Short‐ and long‐term reproducibility of BOLD signal change induced by breath‐holding at 1.5 and 3 T

Abstract

Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) can give insight into the cerebrovascular function. CVR can be estimated by measuring a blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response combined with breath-holding (BH). The reproducibility of this technique has been addressed and existing studies have focused on short-term reproducibility using a 3 T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system. However, little is known about the long-term reproducibility of this procedure and the corresponding reproducibility using a 1.5 T MRI system. Here, we systematically examined the short-and long-term reproducibility of BOLD responses to BH across field strengths. Nine subjects participated in three MRI sessions separated by 30 minutes (sessions 1 and 2: short term) and 68-92 days (sessions 1 and 3, long term) at both 1.5 and 3 T MRI. Our findings revealed that significant differences between field strengths were detected in the activated gray matter volume and BOLD signal change (both P < 0.001), with smaller magnitudes at 1.5 T. However, activation patterns were reproducible, independent of the time interval, brain region or field strength. All interscan coefficient of variation values were below the 33% fiducial limit, and the intraclass correlation coefficient values were above 0.4, which is usually considered the acceptability limit in functional studies. These findings suggest that the response of BOLD signal to BH for assessing CVR is reproducible over time at 1.5 and 3 T. This technique can be considered a tool for monitoring longitudinal changes in patients with cerebrovascular diseases, and its use should be encouraged for clinical 1.5 T MRI systems. K E Y W O R D Scerebrovascular reactivity, CO 2 , field strength, functional magnetic resonance imaging, hypercapnia 1 | INTRODUCTION Cerebral blood vessels are constantly constricting and dilating in response to different stimuli to preserve adequate perfusion and maintain a constant supply of oxygen and nutrients to the brain. This autoregulation property, better known as cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR), is a critical biomarker of vascular health. Alternations in CVR have been shown to provide valuable information regarding cerebrovascular diseases 1,2 and neurodegenerative diseases. 3 In addition, vascular insults related to advanced age can be considered the second most common cause of cognitive decline in elderly individuals. 4 To some extent, it is known that blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance

ICA-based Denoising Strategies in Breath-Hold Induced Cerebrovascular Reactivity Mapping with Multi Echo BOLD fMRI

“…Regarding CVR reliability, the whole-brain average reliability of SE-MPR was comparable to longterm reliability (days or weeks apart) found in previous studies of CVR induced by BH (Peng et al, 2019), by paced deep breathing (Sousa et al, 2014), or by gas challenges (Leung et al, 2016), and higher than that reported in other studies on BH induced CVR estimated with a non-lagged optimized P ET CO 2 hrf trace (Lipp et al, 2015) or with Fourier modelling (Pinto et al, 2016), and by gas challenges (Dengel et al, 2017;Evanoff et al, 2020). Consequently, the reliability of CVR estimates obtained with the optimal combination dataset and conservative ME-ICA modelling approaches were found higher than those previously reported in the literature.…”

“…Consequently, the reliability of CVR estimates obtained with the optimal combination dataset and conservative ME-ICA modelling approaches were found higher than those previously reported in the literature. However, all strategies produced a reliability that was lower than the short-term (within-session) reliability reported in BH induced CVR (Peng et al, 2019), resting state based CVR (P. Liu et al, 2017), and gas challenge induced CVR (Leung et al, 2016), although lower intersession reliability in gas challenges has also been reported (Dengel et al, 2017;Evanoff et al, 2020). Note that the reliability observed in this study seems to be globally higher and spatially less variable than that reported in previous studies (Lipp et al, 2015;Sousa et al, 2014).…”

“…A BH task can be successfully implemented in young children and elderly subjects (Handwerker, Gazzaley, Inglis, & D'Esposito, 2007;Thomason, Burrows, Gabrieli, & Glover, 2005), and it is a robust measurement even if subjects are not able to hold their breath for as long as instructed (Bright & Murphy, 2013a). Moreover, BHinduced CVR has been shown to be a reliable measurement across different sessions of MRI, both in the short (same day) and long term (Peng, Yang, Chen, & Shih, 2019), in terms of spatial reliability (i.e. comparing variability of voxels across multiple sessions in one subject) and general reliability (i.e.…”

Cerebrovascular Reactivity Measurement Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Systematic Review

“…Summary MRI parameters for the BOLD gradient-echo echo-planar imaging (GE-EPI), pulsed continuous ASL (pCASL) and dual-echo ASL/BOLD GE-EPI techniques at 3 T are given in Table 2. Three studies (n = 18) found BOLD-derived CVR values were lower at lower magnetic field strengths (Driver et al, 2010;Triantafyllou et al, 2011;Peng et al, 2020), two of which (n = 9) reported a linear relationship between BOLD-derived CVR and the field strength (Driver et al, 2010;Triantafyllou et al, 2011). In one study (n = 16), ASL-derived CVR did not differ at different field strengths (Noth et al, 2006).…”

Characterization of regional differences in cerebral vascular response to breath holding usingBOLD fMRI

“…The CVR data were processed using the procedures described in the literature 25 . First, the BOLD data were corrected for head motion and temporally high‐pass filtered (1/128 Hz) via the SPM software.…”