Reliable Transcranial Functional Ultrasound in an Adult Cohort (N=13)

Functional ultrasound was initially demonstrated in rodent models, but more recently, transcranial functional ultrasound has been demosntrated in humans in applications where the skull can be bypassed. This includes scenarios like surgery where the skull is removed or in neonates where the skull has not yet fused. These are important demonstrations of the technology, but they are insufficient for widespread clinical or scientific investigation in humans. Here, we demonstrate transcranial functional ultrasound in 13 subjects. To do this, we use a breath hold task. To accomplish transcranial functional ultrasound, we mostly use conventional methods, but we introduce direct axial motion correction and compound Barker coded excitation. Across 13 subjects we achieve a correlation of 0.53±0.08 between the functional ultrasound signal and the block design. This level of correlation matches similar fMRI studies.