Development of FMRI techniques for planning in functional neurosurgery for Parkinson’s disease

Pre-operative neurosurgical planning often uses data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify areas of eloquent cortex, such as the primary and secondary somatosensory cortices, to be spared during surgery. However, the in-vivo visualization of subcortical neurosurgical targets has typically involved the warping of subcortical atlases or T2- and diffusion-weighted imaging techniques to help define the anatomical borders. We propose a novel vibrotactile stimulation technique to activate the somatosensory pathway, and particularly the sensory thalamus. Experiments were executed on two MRI scanners (1.5T and 3.0T). A sensitivity analysis demonstrated that statistically significant functional activations of the sensory thalamus can be in achieved in clinically acceptable time (32 minutes at 1.5T and 12 minutes at 3.0T), thus enabling this technique to be used for pre-operative planning in patients.