http://www.nitrc.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=6758 <table border="0" width="100%"><tr><td align="left"/></tr></table> <p><b>Cold pressor gel test: A safe alternative to the cold pressor test in fMRI.</b></p> <p>Magn Reson Med. 2016 Oct 25;:</p> <p>Authors: Lapotka M, Ruz M, Salamanca Ballesteros A, Ocón Hernández O</p> <p>Abstract<br/> PURPOSE: This study describes a new methodology-the cold pressor gel test (CPGT)-for delivering an accessible experimental pain stimulus, which is reproducible and safe for functional MRI (fMRI).<br/> METHODS: The cold pressor test was modified to put safety precautions into the CPGT. The material used is cool gelled water with a thickening product, which provides a stable temperature at 0.2 °C. Thirteen women with chronic pelvic pain were scanned using a 3 Tesla (T) MR scanner equipped with a 12-channel head coil. Changes in BOLD activation during cold-induced pain were estimated.<br/> RESULTS: The results have demonstrated that gel substances maintain a stable temperature during the experiment, resulting in an insignificant variation. Before the experiment, the mean temperature was 0.2 ± 0.11 °C, and at the end it was 0.7 ± 0.15 °C. The time taken by participants to reach the maximum level of pain during the CPGT was 56.92 ± 11.09 s. The pain intensity during the experiments was 6.92 ± 1.66 on the visual analog scale (VAS). The fMRI analysis showed significant BOLD activation in the main brain regions involved in chronic pain processing.<br/> CONCLUSION: The CPGT is an experimental tool to deliver pain that is easily reproducible, particularly in brain functional imaging studies. Moreover, it is cost-effective, safe, and compatible with fMRI. Magn Reson Med, 2016. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.<br/> </p><p>PMID: 27779778 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]</p> en-us Copyright 2000-2026 NITRC OSI Wed, 06 May 2026 1:57:19 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss NITRC RSS generator