March 29, 2012 - New Carpet Installation at CFMRI in early April

We will be installing new carpet in the offices, conference room and main corridor at the CFMRI on Thurs/Fri/Sat, April 5/6/7 and Thurs/Fri, April 12/13. There will be no access to the conference room on April 5th and 6th.

The work involves moving furniture and belongings from all offices, removing the old carpet, installing the new carpet and moving furniture and belongings back into offices.

This work does not involve the 3T and 7T scanner suites, the mock scanner or the exam rooms. The installation has also been planned to minimize traffic interruptions in the main corridor and impact to MRI scans. We will alert individual scan teams nearer the dates if any inconvenience is likely to arise on particular days.

Thank you for your patience while we improve the appearance of the Center.

March 21, 2012 - CFMRI Invivo Patient Monitoring System Reaching End-of-Life

Our Invivo 3150M patient monitoring systems (typically referred to as the physio cart) in both the 3T West and 3T East magnet rooms are near the products' end of life. We received notification from the manufacturer that they will stop servicing these units in 2013. In some instances, users also noticed noisy MRI images that could be associated with the use of the Invivo units when they were placed close to the magnet.

Our plan is to decommission these Invivo units soon because the GE 3T scanners already have built-in functions for monitoring and recording pulse rate, respiration and ECG. These built-in functions are robust and easy to use. We have full information on our website http://fmri.ucsd.edu/Howto/physio.shtml describing how to set up the built-in physiological monitoring and how to perform physiological noise removal using the recorded physiological data. The GE scanner, however, is not capable of monitoring end-tidal CO2. We are looking for an MRI-compatible device on the market for measuring end-tidal CO2. If you know of any product to recommend, or if you have special requests for the CO2 monitoring, please kindly let us know.

The following are our recommendations for researchers who are currently using the Invivo system for physiological monitoring.

1. If you do not measure end-tidal CO2, we recommend switching to the GE built-in physiological monitoring system. Information on the built-in system is on our website http://fmri.ucsd.edu/Howto/physio.shtml. You can also request hands-on training by contacting Kun Lu at kunlu@ucsd.edu.

2. If you need or prefer to stay with the Invivo system to finish on-going studies, please place the cart outside the 10 Gauss line (marked on the magnet room floor) and avoid any loops and kinks in all cables. This should minimize the occurrence of noisy images. One group on 3T West scanner also stated that it may help reduce noise by placing the cart on the east side of the table than on the west side of the table. However, we do not yet have sufficient data to confirm this observation.

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation.

January 31, 2012 - Improvements to ASL Post Processing Options

We are also happy to announce two additional features on the CBFDAP.
1. Automated ventricle annotation step
2. Support for reprocessing of existing data with different input options
For a further explanation, see the links.
https://cbfbirn.ucsd.edu/site/db_proc_opts.action
https://cbfbirn.ucsd.edu/site/db_mult_proc_opts.action
If you have any questions regarding these changes, particularly those related to scanning under new protocols, please contact David Shin at ddshin@ucsd.edu.

January 31, 2012 - Improvements to ASL Protocols

First, some changes were made to improve the ASL protocols on 3TE and 3TW listed below.
1. Brain_Perfusion_FAIR_4S
2. Brain_Perfusion_FAIR_SS
3. Brain_Perfusion_8pPCASL
4. Brain_Perfusion_OptPCASL
All protocols listed above no longer require a separate CSF scan. For instructions on how to acquire a CSF image as part of the ASL scan and on processing the new data on the CBFBIRN Database and Analysis Pipeline (CBFDAP), please refer to the following link:
https://cbfbirn.ucsd.edu/site/db_sim_asl_csf.action

Another improvement is that users no longer need to manually set research CVs for protocols 3 and 4. Simply prescribe and proceed to scan! Please note that you will still need to acquire a time of flight scan to define the tagging plane. Existing protocols and post processing options can be used just as they were before. However, we encourage you to adopt the improved versions for minimizing user error and convenience.

January 18, 2012 - NoMoCo Pillow Set available for testing at CFMRI

NoMoCo has left a new vinyl coated pillow set at the Center for users to try out and provide some feedback. More information on the pillow set can be obtained at http://www.nomocopillow.com
If you are interested in trying out the kit, please contact Mary O'Malley at momalley@ucsd.edu

January 2, 2012 - Winter 2012 Courses

BIOENG 278 / RAD 278 - Winter 2012
Course title: Magnetic Resonance Imaging Lab
Instructor: Eric Wong, Ph.D. M.D., mailto:ecwong.ucsd.edu
Course Time/Location:
Lectures M 1-2 at the CFMRI Conference Room
Labs WF 2-4 at the CFMRI 3TWest scanner
Website: Course Website
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of linear systems and consent of instructor.
Brief Description:
This lab course provides hand-on experience with MR physics, data acquisition, image formation, and data analysis, using a human MRI scanner. It will focus on the basic principles of MRI, including scanner hardware, spin echoes, gradient echoes, frequency encoding, phase encoding, and RF pulses. Thi! s will be accomplished through 1 hour of formal instruction and 4 hours of scanner time per week. The last 3-4 weeks will be devoted to student projects, and grading will be based on lab reports. NOTE: BENG 280A is listed as a prerequisite for this course, however, because BENG 280A was not offered this fall, the prerequisite is waived for this year, and this course will be more introductory in nature, focusing more on basic concepts than advanced topics.

SOMI-276 C - Winter 2012
Course title: Advanced Topics in fMRI
Organizing Instructor: Rick Buxton, mailto:rbuxton.ucsd.edu
Lecturers: Greg Brown, Rick Buxton, Anna Devor, Frank Haist, Eric Halgren, Tom Liu, Becky Theilmann
Course Time/Location:
Tues/Thurs 2-3:30, fMRI Conference Room, starting Jan. 10
Website: Course Website
Prerequisites: A basic understanding of fMRI, equivalent to SOMI-276A
Brief Description:
This course combines lecture! s and discussion of current papers describing the latest devel! opments in fMRI. This year's topics include: quantitative fMRI (Buxton), mapping networks with resting state correlations (Haist and Liu), combining MR spectroscopy with fMRI (Theilmann), basics of EEG and MEG signals and their combination with fMRI in a multi-modal approach (Halgren), applications of fMRI to test computational neurocognitive models (Brown), and the coupling of blood flow and neural activity (Devor). Presentation of papers is by students taking the course for credit, but other fMRI investigators are encouraged to attend and participate in the discussions.