Abstract #3859

Simultaneous measurement of functional connectivity and cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR): feasibility of vasculature-normalized fcMRI

Xirui Hou¹, Peiying Liu², Hong Gu³, Micaela Chan⁴, Li Yang², Shin-Lei Peng⁵, Yihong Yang³, Denise Park⁴, and Hanzhang Lu^1,2

¹Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States, ²The Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States, ³Neuroimaging Research Branch, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Baltimore, MD, United States, ⁴Center for Vital Longevity, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, United States, ⁵Department of Biomedical Imaging and Radiological Science, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan

Although widely used in fMRI to assess functional connectivity (FC), the blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal is not merely a representation of neural activity, but also inherently modulated by vascular physiology. It is therefore desirable to conduct FC mapping with consideration of vascular properties, ideally in the same scan. The present work demonstrated that FC and cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) could be obtained from BOLD images collected during a single CVR scan. Moreover, the FC indices from gas-inhalation data showed a significant correlation with CVR, suggesting the potential of using CVR as a covariate or normalization factor in interpreting FC results.

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