Functional MRI Core Facility

National Institute Of Mental Health

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

Space Utilization: The Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility (FMRIF) currently occupies approximately 5000 sq ft of space in Building 10, divided between the B1level scanner bays, control rooms and electronics/machine rooms for 3TA/3TB, 3TC, and the Siemens 7T-Classic, (about 1800 sq ft, 1100 sq ft and 1300 sq ft respectively) and office space within the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) center. On the first floor are the Functional MRI Facility and the Section on Functional Imaging Methods suites (approximately 800 sq ft total) for office space and shared conference space for all staff employed full-time by the facility. Staff: The FMRIF staff consists of: the facility director, four staff scientists to keep the scanners running, one staff scientist for the center for multimodal neuroimaging, six MRI technologists, and an information technology specialist. Investigators: The functional MRI facility supports the research of about 30 Principal Investigators translating to over 300 researchers overall. Over 70 research protocols are active and making use of FMRIF scanners. Each scanner has scheduled operating hours of 105 hours per week. Core Projects of the Staff Scientists: Vinai Roopchansingh Dr. Roopchansingh has continued working with the vendor for our new DICOM web service to complete ingestion of all of FMRIFs archive DICOM data, into FMRIFs XNAT instance. He worked with the vendor to provide Zoom-hosted training sessions for users of FMRIFs XNAT instance, and hope to move this instance into production, before the end of this fiscal year. He also worked with another vendor to develop an updated web scheduling application for FMRIF scanner schedules. This will require much more work and effort to bring into production, but the base work has been completed, and the new application is ready to be tested, and to start integration into NIHs infrastructure. He continues assisting with bringing FMRIFs newest scanner (a Siemens 7T Terra) out of the construction phase, and again almost ready for users and patients to run their studies on. Coincident with this, he completed the transition of the scanner schedules, that changed when FMRIF converted one of its 3T systems to 7T. On the technical side of operations, Dr. Roopchansingh worked with multiple groups (mostly in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition) to roll out a multi-band, multi-echo EPI sequence for FMRIFs GE scanners. Already, approximately a handful of projects of have used this sequence for FMRI data acquisition, and in conjunction with this, he has fed back changes FMRIF and NIH have made to this pulse sequence, to GE, that makes it more useful for FMRI studies. Finally, he started development on a new-real time system, that could drive AFNI and other applications based on the states of FMRIFs MRI scanners. This originated in work done by Jerzy Bodurka for FMRIF General Electric scanners. However now, given the mix between GE and Siemens that FMRIF owns and operates, a platform independent solution was in development, and is now at a state where it can publish the state that either vendor's scanners are in, at any given time. Linqing Li Dr. Linqing Li has continued to provide service and assistance to the noninvasive neuromodulation unit headed by Holly Lisanby. He has also been active scientifically in two major projects. The first resulted in a paper, published in November of 2021, Quantification of cerebral blood volume changes caused by visual stimulation at 3 T using DANTE-prepared dual-echo EPI. This is a novel approach that relies on a grid of rapidly applied RF pulses to characterize blood volume and oxygenation over time. Second, he has been working on a manuscript that advances further establishment of the relationship between brain metabolism and blood flow. He is collaborating with Prof. Nicholas Blockley and the paper is still in the process of being written up. Sean Marrett Dr. Marrett was the project officer for the 7TB-FMRIF project, replacing a 3 Tesla MRI system with a 7T human scanner (the first FDA-approved 7T system). Dr. Marrett handled this project's contractual and technical details in close collaboration with his FMRIF colleagues, Dr. Derbyshire and Dr. Roopchansingh. This major project is complete with the old magnet removed in the fall of 2021 and the new magnet delivered in March. The system began collecting test data in July of 2022, and we expect full operations to commence by September 1st. This system will provide the FMRIF community with an FDA-approved 7T scanner, crucial for clinical studies, and increase our ability to carry out the highest resolution FMRI available. The acquisition includes multiple multi-nuclear coils, advancing our ability to carry out spectroscopy studies with FDA-approved RF-coils. Furthermore, the new platform has vastly improved the technical capacity for parallel-transmit FMRI, which shows promise for improving both resolution and specificity and reducing inhomogeneity in imaging the brain. Repair of damaged gradient coil on 7TA-FMRIF Dr. Marrett played a crucial role in ensuring the return to service of our original 7TA-FMRIF, which required persistent and detailed technical and contractual expertise to provide the needed support for this workhorse 7T. n collaboration with members of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition (LBC), 7T eye tracking is now routine on 7TA-FMRIF. Thru Dr. Marrett, FMRIF collaborates closely with Dr. Peter Molfese (CMN) to support concurrent high-density EEG data collection on all of our 3T scanners. IT Infrastructure and new scientific imaging database Work continued deploying a new scientific imaging database based on the open-source XNAT platform. FMRIF has begun to integrate this new database into the routine scanning workflow. Dr. Marrett has supported Dr. Roopchansingh (overall scientific database project lead) with bi-weekly project meetings and feedback to the software vendor. Transition: Dr. Marrett began preparations for his separation from the Functional MRI Facility for a new position at Dartmouth College. Responsibilities for IT infrastructure were passed on to Dr. Roopchansingh, while Dr. Derbyshire has assumed responsibilities for the new 7TB-FMRIF. John (Andy) Derbyshire During 2021, Andy assumed responsibility from Vinai Roopchansingh to provide coordination of the FMRIF user community with the FMRIF MRI Technologists. Dr. Derbyshire continues to be the FMRIF lead in the FMRIF/NIBIB insertable head gradient project. He worked with Dr. Pierpaoli (NIBIB) to acquire an MR field camera which can accurately determine the variations of the gradient fields used for MR image encoding. He provides support installing and maintaining the Siemens Pulse Sequence development environment within the MR Center, including support for all five FMRIF MRI systems plus the NMRF 7T and NIAAA 3T scanners as well as assistance to users with pulse-sequence programming. Dr. Derbyshire is deeply involved with NMR Center safety training and is a member of the safety committee.