Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Surgical Neuro-Oncology Planning: Towards a Standardization in Clinical Settings

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rest-f-MRI) is a neuroimaging technique that has demonstrated its potential in providing new insights into brain physiology. rest-f-MRI can provide useful information in pre-surgical mapping aimed to balancing long-term survival by maximizing the extent of resection of brain neoplasms, while preserving the patient’s functional connectivity. Rest-fMRI may replace or can be complementary to task-driven fMRI (t-fMRI), particularly in patients unable to cooperate with the task paradigm, such as children or sedated, paretic, aphasic patients. Although rest-fMRI is still under standardization, this technique has been demonstrated to be feasible and valuable in the routine clinical setting for neurosurgical planning, along with intraoperative electrocortical mapping. In the literature, there is growing evidence that rest-fMRI can provide valuable information for the depiction of glioma-related functional brain network impairment. Accordingly, rest-fMRI could allow a tailored glioma surgery improving the surgeon’s ability to increase the extent of resection (EOR), and simultaneously minimize the risk of damage of eloquent brain structures and neuronal networks responsible for the integrity of executive functions. In this article, we present a review of the literature and illustrate the feasibility of rest-fMRI in the clinical setting for presurgical mapping of eloquent networks in patients affected by brain tumors, before and after tumor resection.