The developing Human Connectome Project fetal functional MRI release: Methods and data structures

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Neuroscience
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Fetal functional MRI (fMRI) offers insights into early brain development.
• Progress is limited by a lack of accessible, high-quality fetal fMRI datasets.
• Challenges include motion, geometric distortions, and low signal-to-noise ratio in utero.

Purpose of the Study:

• To release the largest open-access fetal fMRI dataset to date.
• To provide a resource for developing and benchmarking methods for in utero brain imaging analysis.
• To facilitate research into the emergence of functional brain connectivity.

Main Methods:

• Release of 275 fetal fMRI scans (255 fetuses, 20.86-38.29 weeks).
• Systematic pre-processing including multi-band SENSE, distortion correction, slice-to-volume reconstruction, and temporal filtering.
• Development of an advanced registration infrastructure for group-level analysis.

Main Results:

• The largest open-access fetal fMRI dataset is now available.
• A comprehensive pre-processing pipeline tailored for in utero data is presented.
• The dataset includes intermediate processing outputs for flexible data exploration.

Conclusions:

• This dataset release significantly advances the potential of fetal fMRI research.
• It provides a crucial resource for developing robust analysis methods for early brain connectivity.
• The findings support the development of a lifelong human connectome.