A Novel Artifact Reduction Strategy for Retaining and Detecting Changes in Muscle Activity in the MR Environment

Jaimie B. Dougherty¹, Christopher J. Conklin², Karen Moxon¹, Scott Faro², Feroze Mohamed²

Combined EMG and fMRI is very desirable. Detecting changes in muscle activity associated with changes in cortical activity can greatly improve our understanding of neuroplastic changes and the affects of treatments in neuromuscular conditions. This work proposes a robust wavelet-based artifact reduction strategy that allows for the distinction between two muscular conditions in an MR environment. This work also introduces the use of the EMG parameter median frequency as a covariate in a motor fatigue study to better refine image analysis.