Functional Ultrasound Imaging of Spinal Cord Hemodynamic Responses to Epidural Electrical Stimulation: A Feasibility Study

Frontiers in Neurology

Bruce E. Knudsen¹  Carlos A. Cuellar¹  Riazul Islam¹  Hai Wen¹  Kendall H. Lee³  Armando Manduca⁴  Shigao Chen⁴  Pengfei Song⁵  Shanshan Tang⁵  Chengwu Huang⁵  Joshua D. Trzasko⁵  Igor A. Lavrov⁶ 

[1] Department of Neurologic Surgery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States;Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States;Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States;Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States;Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States;Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia;

关键词: functional ultrasound;    spinal cord;    hemodynamic responses;    spinal cord injury;    ultrafast imaging;    electrical stimulation;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fneur.2019.00279

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This study presents the first implementation of functional ultrasound (fUS) imaging of the spinal cord to monitor local hemodynamic response to epidural electrical spinal cord stimulation (SCS) on two small and large animal models. SCS has been successfully applied to control chronic refractory pain and recently was evolved to alleviate motor impairment in Parkinson's disease and after spinal cord injury. At present, however, the mechanisms underlying SCS remain unclear, and current methods for monitoring SCS are limited in their capacity to provide the required sensitivity and spatiotemporal resolutions to evaluate functional changes in response to SCS. fUS is an emerging technology that has recently shown promising results in monitoring a variety of neural activities associated with the brain. Here we demonstrated the feasibility of performing fUS on two animal models during SCS. We showed in vivo spinal cord hemodynamic responses measured by fUS evoked by different SCS parameters. We also demonstrated that fUS has a higher sensitivity in monitoring spinal cord response than electromyography. The high spatial and temporal resolutions of fUS were demonstrated by localized measurements of hemodynamic responses at different spinal cord segments, and by reliable tracking of spinal cord responses to patterned electrical stimulations, respectively. Finally, we proposed optimized fUS imaging and post-processing methods for spinal cord. These results support feasibility of fUS imaging of the spinal cord and could pave the way for future systematic studies to investigate spinal cord functional organization and the mechanisms of spinal cord neuromodulation in vivo.

【 授权许可】

Unknown