Quantitative comparisons on hand motor functional areas determined by resting state and task BOLD fMRI and anatomical MRI for pre-surgical planning of patients with brain tumors

Abstract

For pre-surgical planning we present quantitative comparison of the location of the hand motor functional area determined by right hand finger tapping BOLD fMRI, resting state BOLD fMRI, and anatomically using high resolution T1 weighted images. Data were obtained on 10 healthy subjects and 25 patients with left sided brain tumors. Our results show that there are important differences in the locations (i.e., > 20 mm) of the determined hand motor voxels by these three MR imaging methods. This can have significant effect on the pre-surgical planning of these patients depending on the modality used. In 13 of the 25 cases (i.e., 52%) the distances between the task-determined and the rs-fMRI determined hand areas were more than 20 mm; in 13 of 25 cases (i.e., 52%) the distances between the task-determined and anatomically determined hand areas were > 20 mm; and in 16 of 25 cases (i.e., 64%) the distances between the rs-fMRI determined and anatomically determined hand areas were more than 20 mm. In just three cases, the distances determined by all three modalities were within 20 mm of each other. The differences in the location or fingerprint of the hand motor areas, as determined by these three MR methods result from the different underlying mechanisms of these three modalities and possibly the effects of tumors on these modalities.

Keywords: Anatomical T1wighted images; Brain tumor; Localizing hand motor area; Task- and resting state-functional MR images.

Fig. 1

The hand area shown by the green crossheads determined by the anatomical images (1 A) and the maps generated from the task fMRI (1B) and rs-fMRI (1C) data for the 3rd case in Table 1. The yellow and black arrows point to the “seed” area and the two white arrows point to the tumors. For the maps, the left side is the right side. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 2

A 3D plot (ftap (star), resting (cycle) and ana (square)) for the locations of the voxels of the hand areas in the sensory and motor cortices (or networks) of the tumor (i.e., the left) sides for the 25 cases.

Fig. 3

The 2D and 3D maps for the tumor group with 25 cases, on the left are the sensory and motor functional maps generated by the right hand finger tapping fMRI data and on the right are the FC maps for the sensory and motor network generated by the rs-fMRI data. In the images, the left is the left side.

Fig. 4

The anatomical images (A) and the maps shown the hand areas in the sensory and motor cortices generated from the finger tapping task fMRI data (B), rs-fMRI (C) data for the 7th case in Table 2. The yellow arrow points to the “seed” area. The left side is the right side in the figure.(For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 5

A 3D plot (ftap (star), resting (circle) and ana (square)) for the locations of the voxels of the hand areas in the sensory and motor cortices (or networks) on the left sides for the 10 healthy subjects.

Fig. 6

The 2D and 3D maps for the healthy group with 10 cases. On the left are the motor functional maps generated by the right hand finger tapping fMRI data and on the right are the FC maps for the sensory and motor network generated by the rs-fMRI data. In the images, the left is the left.