Abstract #3742

On the variability of cardiac pulse artifacts across heartbeats affecting EEG recordings in simultaneous EEG-fMRI: a 7T study

João Jorge¹, Charlotte Bouloc¹, Lucie Bréchet^1,2, Christoph M. Michel^2,3, and Rolf Gruetter^1,4,5

¹Laboratory for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, ²Functional Brain Mapping Lab, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, ³Biomedical Imaging Research Center (CIBM), Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland, ⁴Department of Radiology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, ⁵Department of Radiology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

EEG recordings performed in MRI scanners suffer from complex artifacts caused by heart function, termed pulse artifacts (PAs), which can strongly compromise EEG quality. This study investigated the properties and mechanisms of PA variability across heartbeats, which remains poorly understood. Simultaneous EEG-fMRI was performed at 7T on healthy participants with concurrent breathing and cardiac recordings. PA variability showed an important impact on EEG quality, and was linked not only to changes in head position/orientation across time, but also, and more importantly, to respiration and heart rate. These findings have important consequences for PA correction, highly relevant to most EEG-fMRI applications.

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