Dr. Lu focuses his research on EEG-fMRI.The use of simultaneous measurement of electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the study of epileptic disorders has been shown to provide considerable information about determination of the brain regions generating interictal epileptiform activity. This technique make possible not only the study of dynamic relationships between the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) and the electrical activity recorded on the scalp, but also combination the good spatial resolution of fMRI and the excellent temporal resolution of EEG.
Currently, most research groups have studied epileptic spikes with simultaneous EEG-fMRI techniques have used mostly classical the fMRI analysis method,the general linear model (GLM). However the use offixed shape HRFs may have contributed to several limitations in EEG-fMRI studies, including: 1) Neglect of the spatial heterogeneity of EEG-fMRI signal. Experiments have shown that the hemodynamic response differs from person to person, from day to day, and probably also in different regions of the brain. 2) A relatively low percentage of the patients demonstrating significant activations following statistical processing of the fMRI data.
The aim of the current research project is to find some voxel-specific HRF model for EEG-fMRI data analysis and to see if the voxel-specific HRF based model can increase the detection sensitivity in patients with epilepsy.