Yue Zhang1, Christopher B. Glielmi, Yin
Jiang2, Jing Liu3, Ying Hao4, Xiaoying Wang3,4,
Jing Fang, 1,4, Jisheng Han2, Jue Zhang, 1,4,
Xiaoping Hu5
1College of Engineering, Peking
University, Beijing, China; 2Neuroscience Research Institute,
Peking University, Beijing, China; 3Dept.of Radiology, Peking
University First Hospital, Beijing, China; 4Academy for Advanced
Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China; 5Dept.
of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology / Emory
University, Atlanta, United States
Blood
oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) technique has been used to map brain
activity related to electrical acupoint stimulation (EAS) in previous
pain-relief studies, but introduces relatively poor reproducibility and
consistencies. In this study, the dual-echo based simultaneous acquisition of
cerebral blood flow (CBF) and BOLD was employed to provide the first evidence
of CBF response to EAS and inter-subjects variation was compared between
the two techniques. The results suggested that the sensitivity and
specificity to sensory and pain-related regions were consistent with previous
findings. Moreover, CBF based inter-subjectsvariation had a significant
decrease than BOLD.