Intraoperative Functional Ultrasound Imaging of Human Brain Activity

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 7; no. 1; pp. 7304 - 7
• Main Authors: Imbault, Marion, Chauvet, Dorian, Gennisson, Jean-Luc, Capelle, Laurent, Tanter, Mickael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 04.08.2017; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 59; 631/378; 639/766/25/3927; 692/308; Adult; Bioengineering; Brain; Brain - physiology; Brain Mapping; Brain tumors; Cerebral blood flow; Cerebral Cortex - physiology; Cortex; Female; Glioma; Human health and pathology; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Imaging; Life Sciences; Male; Middle Aged; multidisciplinary; Neurobiology; Neuroimaging; Neurons and Cognition; Risk reduction; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Surgery; Ultrasonic imaging; Ultrasonography; Ultrasound; Young Adult
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-06474-8

The functional mapping of brain activity is essential to perform optimal glioma surgery and to minimize the risk of postoperative deficits. We introduce a new, portable neuroimaging modality of the human brain based on functional ultrasound (fUS) for deep functional cortical mapping. Using plane-wave transmissions at an ultrafast frame rate (1 kHz), fUS is performed during surgery to measure transient changes in cerebral blood volume with a high spatiotemporal resolution (250 µm, 1 ms). fUS identifies, maps and differentiates regions of brain activation during task-evoked cortical responses within the depth of a sulcus in both awake and anaesthetized patients.