Development of a wide-view visual presentation system for functional MRI studies of peripheral visual

Abstract

In present paper, we described a novel wide-view visual presentation system for fMRI studies. To achieve a wide field view, a translucent spherical screen with a curvature radius of 30 mm was placed 30 mm away from the subjects' eyes. The subjects wore contact lenses that enabled them to focus on the screen, and the resulting visual field reached 120°. Then, high resolution computer-generated images were projected onto the translucent hemispheric screen inside the MRI bore. Signal-to-noise ratio valuation experiment was performed to evaluate the clarity and quality of the MRI images. In addition, we successfully applied this visual presentation system to studies of visual retinotopic mapping and object perception neural function in the peripheral visual field. Our study demonstrated that the system is compatible with the MRI environment. Moreover, this system was more effective at mapping checkerboard stimuli in V1-V3, and successfully located several classical category-selective areas, including the face-selective area (FFA), occipital face area (OFA), house-selective area (PPA), transverse occipital sulcus (TOS), lateral occipital complex (LOC) in higher-level visual areas. In conclusion, the wide-view visual presentation system within the MRI environment can be applied to many kinds of fMRI studies of peripheral vision. © Springer International Publishing 2013.