Improving the clinical potential of ultra-high field fMRI using a model-free analysis method based on response consistency

OBJECTIVE: To develop an analysis method that is sensitive to non-model-conform responses often encountered in ultra-high field presurgical planning fMRI. Using the consistency of time courses over a number of experiment repetitions, it should exclude low quality runs and generate activation maps that reflect the reliability of responses. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 7 T fMRI data were acquired from six healthy volunteers: three performing purely motor tasks and three a visuomotor task. These were analysed with the proposed approach (UNBIASED) and the GLM. RESULTS: UNBIASED results were generally less affected by false positive results than the GLM. Runs that were identified as being of low quality were confirmed to contain little or no activation. In two cases, regions were identified as activated in UNBIASED but not GLM results. Signal changes in these areas were time-locked to the task, but were delayed or transient. CONCLUSION: UNBIASED is shown to be a reliable means of identifying consistent task-related signal changes regardless of response timing. In presurgical planning, UNBIASED could be used to rapidly generate reliable maps of the consistency with which eloquent brain regions are activated without recourse to task timing and despite modified hemodynamics. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10334-016-0533-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.