Combined Pre- And Intra-Operative fMRI for Neurosurgical Guidance: Data Alignment and Bayesian Analysis.

Joerg Magerkurth¹, Laura Mancini¹, William Penny², Guillaume Flandin², John Ashburner², Caroline Micallef¹, Enrico De Vita¹, Tarek A. Yousry¹, John Thornton¹, Nikolaus Weiskopf²

Intra-operative fMRI combined with pre-surgical fMRI planning could provide crucial information to guide neurosurgery. The intra-operative (1.5T) MR scanner at our institution presents lower signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratios and significantly larger distortions than the 3T MR scanner used pre-operatively. We present a pre-processing and Bayesian analysis method for pre- and intra-operative fMRI. While classical inference identifies only activated area, the Bayesian approach labels three areas: activated, non-activated, and areas where the data do not allow for a robust classification. The method was tested on 10 healthy volunteers in a passive movement paradigm, which could also be used under anesthesia.