This study aims at paving the way for spinal cord MRI and fMRI during spinal cord stimulation (SCS) in rats, with the goal of providing an experimental framework for assessing the impact of SCS on neuroplasticity and functional circuitry. MRI and fMRI of the spinal cord during SCS are extremely challenging due to motion and electrode-induced susceptibility artefacts. Here we demonstrated that high quality MRI and fMRI images of the spinal cord could be obtained at 16.4T during SCS with recently developed MB-SWIFT. This is the first study that attempts spinal cord fMRI during SCS in rats.
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