Abstract #3265

White matter MS lesions effect on resting state fMRI analysis: should we lesion fill functional data?

Gloria Castellazzi^1,2, Anisha Doshi¹, Adnan Alahmadi^3,4, Floriana De Angelis¹, Jeremy Chataway¹, Ferran Prados^1,5,6, and Claudia AM Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott^1,7,8

¹NMR Research Unit, Queen Square MS Centre, Department of Neuroinflammation, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom, ²Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, ³Diagnostic Radiography Technology Department, Faculty of Applied Medical Sciences, King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ⁴MRI Research Unit, Queen Square MS Centre, Department of Neuroinflammation, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom, ⁵Centre for Medical Image Computing (CMIC), Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering, UCL, London, United Kingdom, ⁶Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, ⁷Department of Brain and behavioral sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, ⁸Brain 3T MRI Centre, Neuroradiology, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy

Multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions are well known to alter tissue segmentation, shifting tissue boundaries between grey and white matter regions (GM and WM). Despite evidence of these errors occurring when working with anatomical images, little is known about the possible effects of MS lesions on the functional MRI results. Here, we addressed this question by simulating the presence of MS lesions on resting state functional MRI data from healthy controls. Subsequently, we tested whether lesion filling functional MRI data is useful to prevent artefactual results of functional connectivity alterations that are actually due to MS lesions.

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