Abbreviations: ROI: Region-of-Interest; a.u: Arbitrary Units; PT%: Percentage of Suprathreshold Voxels within the ROI

Figure 5: Mapping and time course of the response in T2* signal during respiratory challenge (carbogen stimulus for data acquisition, 0.2 threshold for data analysis [A-F] in the knee contralateral to the arthritic knee of a carrageenin-injected rabbit model. A large standardized response mean (SRM) in PT% was depicted between baseline (A) and short-term exposure to increased temperature (C). Panels B, D, F show changes in the on-and-off signal intensity in the corresponding region-ofinterest for 60-second interval paradigms of normoxia (off) and hyperoxia (on) at the time of the experiment. The red lines of the graphs indicate the averaged time courses of differences in BOLD signal intensity in the perisynovial tissue that were measured and the blue lines the superposed on- and –off Talairach-based paradigms that were used for calculations.