title: Robust preprocessing for stimulus-based functional MRI of the moving fetus.
abstract: Fetal motion manifests as signal degradation and image artifact in the acquired time series of blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. We present a robust preprocessing pipeline to specifically address fetal and placental motion-induced artifacts in stimulus-based fMRI with slowly cycled block design in the living fetus. In the proposed pipeline, motion correction is optimized to the experimental paradigm, and it is performed separately in each phase as well as in each region of interest (ROI), recognizing that each phase and organ experiences different types of motion. To obtain the averaged BOLD signals for each ROI, both misaligned volumes and noisy voxels are automatically detected and excluded, and the missing data are then imputed by statistical estimation based on local polynomial smoothing. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed pipeline was effective in mitigating the motion-induced artifacts in stimulus-based fMRI data of the fetal brain and placenta.
authors.affiliation: Children's National Medical Center , Department of Diagnostic Imaging and Radiology, 111 Michigan Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20852, United States.
authors.forename: Wonsang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: You
authors.affiliation: Children's National Medical Center, Department of Diagnostic Imaging and Radiology, 111 Michigan Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20852, United States; George Washington University, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Department of Radiology, 2300 Eye Street N.W., Washington, DC 20037, United States.
authors.forename: Iordanis E
authors.initials: IE
authors.lastname: Evangelou
authors.affiliation: Children's National Medical Center , Department of Diagnostic Imaging and Radiology, 111 Michigan Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20852, United States.
authors.forename: Zungho
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zun
authors.affiliation: Children's National Medical Center, Department of Fetal and Transitional Medicine, 111 Michigan Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20852, United States; Children's National Medical Center, Department of Neonatology, 111 Michigan Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20852, United States; George Washington University, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Department of Pediatrics, 2300 Eye Street N.W., Washington, DC 20037, United States.
authors.forename: Nickie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Andescavage
authors.affiliation: Children's National Medical Center, Department of Diagnostic Imaging and Radiology, 111 Michigan Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20852, United States; George Washington University, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Department of Radiology, 2300 Eye Street N.W., Washington, DC 20037, United States; Children's National Medical Center, Department of Fetal and Transitional Medicine, 111 Michigan Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20852, United States; George Washington University, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Department of Pediatrics, 2300 Eye Street N.W., Washington, DC 20037, United States.
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Limperopoulos
keywords: fetal brain; functional magnetic resonance imaging; maternal hyperoxia; motion correction; placenta; preprocessing