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. 2022 Oct;20(4):1137-1154.
doi: 10.1007/s12021-022-09592-5. Epub 2022 Jul 14.

RS-FetMRI: a MATLAB-SPM Based Tool for Pre-processing Fetal Resting-State fMRI Data

Nicolò Pecco  1 , Matteo Canini  2 , Kelsey H H Mosser  2 , Martina Caglioni  3 , Paola Scifo  4 , Antonella Castellano  2   5 , Paolo Cavoretto  3   5 , Massimo Candiani  3   5 , Cristina Baldoli  2 , Andrea Falini  2   5 , Pasquale Anthony Della Rosa  6
Affiliations

RS-FetMRI: a MATLAB-SPM Based Tool for Pre-processing Fetal Resting-State fMRI Data

Nicolò Pecco et al. Neuroinformatics. 2022 Oct.

Abstract

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) most recently has proved to open a measureless window on functional neurodevelopment in utero. Fetal brain activation and connectivity maps can be heavily influenced by 1) fetal-specific motion effects on the time-series and 2) the accuracy of time-series spatial normalization to a standardized gestational-week (GW) specific fetal template space.Due to the absence of a standardized and generalizable image processing protocol, the objective of the present work was to implement a validated fetal rs-fMRI preprocessing pipeline (RS-FetMRI) divided into 6 inter-dependent preprocessing modules (i.e., M1 to M6) and designed to work entirely as an extension for Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM).RS-FetMRI pipeline output analyses on rs-fMRI time-series sampled from a cohort of fetuses acquired on both 1.5 T and 3 T MRI scanning systems showed increased efficacy of estimation of the degree of movement coupled with an efficient motion censoring procedure, resulting in increased number of motion-uncorrupted volumes and temporal continuity in fetal rs-fMRI time-series data. Moreover, a "structural-free" SPM-based spatial normalization procedure granted a high degree of spatial overlap with high reproducibility and a significant improvement in whole-brain and parcellation-specific Temporal Signal-to-Noise Ratio (TSNR) mirrored by functional connectivity analysis.To our knowledge, the RS-FetMRI pipeline is the first semi-automatic and easy-to-use standardized fetal rs-fMRI preprocessing pipeline completely integrated in MATLAB-SPM able to remove entry barriers for new research groups into the field of fetal rs-fMRI, for both research or clinical purposes, and ultimately to make future fetal brain connectivity investigations more suitable for comparison and cross-validation.

Keywords: Fetal; Motion estimation; Pipeline; Pre-processing; Resting-state Fmri; Spatial normalization.

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