vascular responses

Problem

There has been research to prove that cerebral amyloid angiography (CAA) can lead to measurable differences in the fMRI response amplitude.

Objective

For this study, the goal was to examine the hemodynamic responses across different cortical depths driven by visual stimulation and CO2 inhalation.

Skills Employed

MATLAB
Linux environment
Statistical analysis and basic signal processing

Figure 1. Graphs showing the percent signal change of the brain at different depths of the left and right hemisphere.

Approach

Essentially:

Estimated vascular responses driven by both visual and physiological stimulus
Characterized the progression patterns of vascular responses across cortical depths
Compared the derived vascular response patterns between CAA vs. healthy subjects
Co-authored conference abstract of the study findings submitted to the Organization of Human Brain Mapping 2021 conference
Attended the Organization of Human Brain Mapping 2021 Virtual conference

Figure 2. Graph showing the percent signal change of the brain of heathy subjects (at two different MRI repetition times (TR)) and of subjects with cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA)

Results

The developed MATLAB code successfully examined the hemodynamic responses across different cortical depths driven by visual stimulation and CO2 inhalation and resulted in a conference abstract!