Abstract

Objectives: Navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) provides significant benefits over classic TMS. Yet, the acquisition of individual structural magnetic resonance images (MRIindividual) is a time-consuming, expensive, and not feasible prerequisite in all subjects for spatial tracking and anatomical guidance in nTMS studies. We hypothesize that spatial transformation can be used to adjust MRI templates to individual head shapes (MRIwarped) and that TMS parameters do not differ between nTMS using MRIindividual or MRIwarped.Materials and Methods: Twenty identical TMS sessions, each including four different navigation conditions, were conducted in 10 healthy subjects (one female, 27.4 ± 3.8 years), i.e., twice per subject by two researchers to additionally assess interrater reliabilities. MRIindividual were acquired for all subjects. MRIwarped were obtained through the spatial transformation of a template MRI following a 5-, 9-and 36-point head surface registration (MRIwarped_5, MRIwarped_9, MRIwarped_36). Stimulation hotspot locations, resting motor threshold (RMT), 500 μV motor threshold (500 μV-MT), and mean absolute motor evoked potential difference (MAD) of primary motor cortex (M1) examinations were compared between nTMS using either MRIwarped variants or MRIindividual and non-navigated TMS.Results: M1 hotspots were spatially consistent between MRIindividual and MRIwarped_36 (insignificant deviation by 4.79 ± 2.62 mm). MEP thresholds and variance were also equivalent between MRIindividual and MRIwarped_36 with mean differences of RMT by −0.05 ± 2.28% maximum stimulator output (%MSO; t(19) = −0.09, p = 0.923), 500 μV-MT by −0.15 ± 1.63%MSO (t(19) = −0.41, p = 0.686) and MAD by 70.5 ± 214.38 μV (t(19) = 1.47, p = 0.158). Intraclass correlations (ICC) of motor thresholds were between 0.88 and 0.97.Conclusions: NTMS examinations of M1 yield equivalent topographical and functional results using MRIindividual and MRIwarped if a sufficient number of registration points are used.

Highlights

  • Navigation systems are increasingly used in research and clinical studies to direct transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) induced effects to specific target sites in healthy subjects and patients (Ruohonen and Karhu, 2010; Rothwell, 2012; Fleischmann et al, 2013)

  • We hypothesize that spatial transformation can be used to adjust magnetic resonance images (MRI) templates to individual head shapes (MRIwarped) and that TMS parameters do not differ between navigated TMS (nTMS) using MRIindividual or MRIwarped

  • Stimulation hotspot locations, resting motor threshold (RMT), 500 μV motor threshold (500 μV-MT), and mean absolute motor evoked potential difference (MAD) of primary motor cortex (M1) examinations were compared between nTMS using either MRIwarped variants or MRIindividual and non-navigated TMS

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Summary

Introduction

Navigation systems are increasingly used in research and clinical studies to direct transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) induced effects to specific target sites in healthy subjects and patients (Ruohonen and Karhu, 2010; Rothwell, 2012; Fleischmann et al, 2013) These systems use two-dimensional structural images, mostly magnetic resonance images (MRI), of a subject’s head to render an individual three-dimensional head model. Another study reported that motor evoked potentials (MEP) elicited by nTMS were more stable, had shorter latencies and larger amplitudes as compared to non-navigated conditions (Julkunen et al, 2009) These findings show that the validity of cortical excitability estimates obtained by nTMS is superior to that of non-navigated systems. NTMS systems should be preferred over non-navigated TMS systems whenever possible

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