Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that is able to demonstrate where the brain is functioning (fMRI) is a relatively new development. However, it has already had a significant impact on our understanding of brain function and our ability to detect changes as a result of injury. The focus of research in my lab builds upon my work on two new developments in this field: 1) fMRI of the spinal cord, and 2) the discovery of a second mechanism for detecting changes in brain or spinal cord function. This work will significantly enhance the benefit of fMRI to patients with spinal cord or brain trauma by developing spinal fMRI into a clinical tool, and by revealing more physiological information related to neuronal function (changes in blood flow, pressure, oxygen metabolism).

This work will significantly enhance the benefit of fMRI to patients with spinal cord or brain trauma by improving the sensitivity and extending the physiological information revealed to clinicians to aid in diagnosis and treatment planning.

Magnetic resonance imaging of neuronal function in the human spinal cord has been developed to the point that it can accurately demonstrate activity when combined across groups of research subjects or patients. Individual activity maps demonstrate true areas of activity as well as highly variable error results which must be eliminated in order to obtain accurate and sensitive maps for assessing function in patients.

Based on experience to date, the dominant sources of error are hypothesized to be related to cardiac and respiratory motion. These errors can therefore be identified and reduced or eliminated by recording the cardiac and respiratory motion, determining the relationships between errors and motion, and modeling the errors for each study. The sensitivity will also be improved with accurate modeling of the neuronal-activity- related signal changes. The resulting methods will be assessed by quantifying the reproducibility and applying them to the assessment of spinal cord injuries.

This research is supported by:

• Canadian Research Chairs Program
• Canadian Foundation for Innovation
• International Spinal Research Trust (UK)