Biomedical subjects

Pierre-Francois Van De Moortele

Publications and source records attributed to Pierre-Francois Van De Moortele.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Human brain glycogen content and metabolism: implications on its role in brain energy metabolism.

The adult brain relies on glucose for its energy needs and stores it in the form of glycogen, primarily in astrocytes. Animal and culture studies indicate that brain glycogen may support neuronal function when the glucose supply from the blood is inadequate and/or during neuronal activation. However, the concentration of glycogen and rates of its metabolism in the human brain are unknown. We used in vivo localized 13C-NMR spectroscopy to measure glycogen content and turnover in the human brain. Nine healthy volunteers received intravenous infusions of [1-(13)C]glucose for durations ranging from 6 to 50 h, and brain glycogen labeling and washout were measured in the occipital lobe for up to 84 h. The labeling kinetics suggest that turnover is the main mechanism of label incorporation into brain glycogen. Upon fitting a model of glycogen metabolism to the time courses of newly synthesized glycogen, human brain glycogen content was estimated at approximately 3.5 micromol/g, i.e., three- to fourfold higher than free glucose at euglycemia. Turnover of bulk brain glycogen occurred at a rate of 0.16 micromol.g-1.h-1, implying that complete turnover requires 3-5 days. Twenty minutes of visual stimulation (n=5) did not result in detectable glycogen utilization in the visual cortex, as judged from similar [13C]glycogen levels before and after stimulation. We conclude that the brain stores a substantial amount of glycogen relative to free glucose and metabolizes this store very slowly under normal physiology.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Sensitivity of single-voxel 1H-MRS in investigating the metabolism of the activated human visual cortex at 7 T.

Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) has been used in a number of studies to noninvasively assess the temporal changes of lactate in the activated human brain. However, the results have not been consistent. The aim of the present study was to test the sensitivity of 1H-MRS during functional experiments at the highest magnetic field currently available for human studies (7 T). Stability and reproducibility of the measurements were evaluated from LCModel analysis of time series of spectra measured during a visual stimulation paradigm and by examination of the difference between spectra obtained at rest and during activation. The sensitivity threshold to detect concentration changes was 0.2 micromol/g for most of the quantified metabolites. The possible variations of metabolite concentrations during visual stimulation were within the same range (+/-0.2 micromol/g). In addition, the influence of a small line-narrowing effect due to the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) T2* changes on the estimated concentrations was simulated. Quantification of metabolites was, in general, not affected beyond 1% by line-width changes within 0.5 Hz.

Humans↗

PubMed2005

Signal and noise characteristics of Hahn SE and GE BOLD fMRI at 7 T in humans.

At very high magnetic fields, GE BOLD fMRI is expected to contain nonspecific contributions and behave differently than HSE fMRI data. Similarly, the two approaches can conceivably suffer from different contributions to temporal instabilities in a times series that ultimately determine the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR). We investigate the signal and signal fluctuation characteristics in GE and HSE fMRI data with the imaging parameters separately optimized for each contrast at 7 T. In HSE fMRI, activation-induced fractional signal change (DeltaS/S) decreased rapidly, and the ratio of standard deviations of image-to-image fluctuations due to physiological processes (sigmaPhys) to thermal noise (sigmaTherm) remained constant with increasing voxel volume. In contrast, DeltaS/S as well as volume of activated voxels was virtually independent of voxel size for GE BOLD, and sigma(Phys)/sigmaTherm increased with increasing voxel size. The ratio of BOLD signal changes (GE/HSE) was much closer to 1 in tissue areas compared to vessel areas. These observations led to the conclusions that the spatial extent of the activation-induced DeltaS/S was much broader in the GE data, and that the physiological processes that give rise to the temporal fluctuations lost coherence over millimeter distances in HSE compared to GE fMRI data. While further studies are needed to characterize it fully, sigmaPhys in HSE data was clearly different than in GE data. It was concluded that HSE imaging yields a significantly reduced amount of nonspecific signals compared to GE imaging, and, would be the method of choice (over GE) for high-resolution applications in humans.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Spin-echo fMRI in humans using high spatial resolutions and high magnetic fields.

The Hahn spin-echo (HSE)-based BOLD effect at high magnetic fields is expected to provide functional images that originate exclusively from the microvasculature. The blood contribution that dominates HSE BOLD contrast at low magnetic fields (e.g., 1.5 T), and degrades specificity, is highly attenuated at high fields because the apparent T(2) of venous blood in an HSE experiment decreases quadratically with increasing magnetic field. In contrast, the HSE BOLD contrast is believed to arise from the microvasculature and increase supralinearly with the magnetic field strength. In this work we report the results of detailed and quantitative evaluations of HSE BOLD signal changes for functional imaging in the human visual cortex at 4 and 7 T. This study used high spatial resolution, afforded by the increased signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of higher field strengths and surface coils, to avoid partial volume effects (PVEs), and demonstrated increased contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and spatial specificity at the higher field strengths. The HSE BOLD signal changes induced by visual stimulation were predominantly linearly dependent on the echo time (TE). They increased in magnitude almost quadratically in going from 4 to 7 T when the blood contribution was suppressed using Stejskal-Tanner gradients that suppress signals from the blood due to its inhomogeneous flow and higher diffusion constant relative to tissue. The HSE signal changes at 7 T were modeled accurately using a vascular volume of 1.5%, in agreement with the capillary volume of gray matter. Furthermore, high-resolution acquisitions indicate that CNR increased with voxel sizes < 1 mm(3) due to diminishing white matter or cerebrospinal fluid-space vs. gray matter PVEs. It was concluded that the high-field HSE functional MRI (fMRI) signals originated largely from the capillaries, and that the magnitude of the signal changes associated with brain function reached sufficiently high levels at 7 T to make it a useful approach for mapping on the millimeter to submillimeter spatial scale.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Perfusion-based high-resolution functional imaging in the human brain at 7 Tesla.

Perfusion-based MRI measures cerebral blood flow (CBF) at the capillary level and can be used for functional studies based on the tight spatial coupling between brain activity and blood flow. Obtaining functional CBF maps with high spatial resolution is a major challenge because the CBF signal is intrinsically low and the SNR is critical. In the present work, CBF-based functional imaging was performed at a considerably smaller voxel size than previously reported in humans. High-resolution CBF maps were obtained with voxel sizes as small as 0.9 x 0.9 x 1.5 mm(3) in the human brain. High sensitivity was made possible by signal-to-noise gains at the high magnetic field of 7 T and by using a novel RF combination coil design. In addition, a reduction of the field-of-view was critical to achieve 0.9-mm in-plane resolution with gradient-echo echo-planar imaging in a single shot. Functional CBF data were compared with functional BOLD data to reveal that, for CBF, large contrast- to-noise gains were obtained at high spatial resolution, indicating that the functional CBF response was more localized. High-resolution functional CBF imaging is significant for neuroscience research because it provides better localization and more specific information than BOLD for monitoring brain function.

Cerebrovascular Circulation↗