A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I enjoy looking at the Radiology Picture Of The Day website, and I thought today’s post was worth sharing with you.
This is an fMRI image of a patient’s brain using a technique called BOLD (Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent) to do real-time imaging of brain function — in this case, the patient was speaking. The doctors treating this patient wanted to map out the areas of his brain that were used for speech prior to brain surgery to know where to avoid removing or disturbing tissue. The technique can be used to delineate various functional regions, but is limited in its effectiveness by the way blood flow in the brain works.
