Direct detection of brain function using magnetic resonance imaging

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Transient magnetization transfer phenomena was theoretically formulated and analyzed in order for the clinical application of MTC to detect the brain function directly. It was found to be possible to analyze the transient MTC effect by assuming the pseudo-steady state in MTC explicitly incorporating the T_1 discrimination effect. Acquisition parameters in MTC imaging sequence was optimized using the simulation of the theoretical formalism. A fortran program was coded to extract the relevant relaxation parameters from the off-resonance dispersion curve using the non-linear curve fitting procedure. Currently we are applying this technique to detect the brain activation during various tasks in EPI image sequence where MTC contribution, which reflects neuronal excitation directly, would be superimposed on the BOLD effect.On the other hand, we designed a new mutli-dimensional task sequence by which we can separate multiple tasks and their correlation simultaneously by a multiple frequency task labeling technique. We are currently applying this technique to detect various brain functions, such as numerical calculation, stereopsis, sentence recognition etc. We have detected an activation related to 'willingness' up to now.