Static and dynamic BOLD fMRI components along white matter fibre tracts and their dependence on the orientation of the local diffusion tensor axis relative to the B0-field.

Recent studies have reported functional MRI (fMRI) activation within cerebral white matter (WM) using blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) contrast. Many blood vessels in WM run parallel to the fibre bundles, and other studies observed dependence of susceptibility contrast-based measures of blood volume on the local orientation of the fibre bundles relative to the magnetic field or B0 axis. Motivated by this, we characterized the dependence of gradient-echo BOLD fMRI on fibre orientation (estimated by the local diffusion tensor) relative to the B0 axis to test whether the alignment between bundles and vessels imparts an orientation dependence on resting-state BOLD fluctuations in the WM. We found that the baseline signal level of the T2*-weighted data is 11% higher in voxels containing fibres parallel to B0 than those containing perpendicular fibres, consistent with a static influence of either fibre or vessel orientation on local T2* values. We also found that BOLD fluctuations in most bundles exhibit orientation effects expected from oxygenation changes, with larger amplitudes from voxels containing perpendicular fibres. Different magnitudes of this orientation effect were observed across the major WM bundles, with inferior fasciculus, corpus callosum and optic radiation exhibiting 14-19% higher fluctuations in voxels containing perpendicular compared to parallel fibres.