Multimodal Imaging as a tool to study the neurovascular coupling in the spinal cord

The present thesis proposes an interdisciplinary research combining biomedical and physical science, with the intent to develop a multidisciplinary network between advanced X-ray imaging techniques, fMRI and new algorithms to develop a solid multimodal method for pre-clinical research in the field of imaging. In particular, in this work we characterized the spinal BOLD signal using a multimodal approach. We investigated 1) The biophysical features of the spinal BOLD functional response. 2) The structure of the SC vascular and neuronal networks, which together contribute to the BOLD signal in fMRI. The information gathered on these networks will be used to develop an optimized spinal BOLD model. Indeed the currently used fMRI model is a mathematical abstraction of the vascular/metabolic response in the rat brain cortex, which may not be appropriate for the SC