Contribution of the multi-echo approach in accelerated functional magnetic resonance imaging multiband acquisition
Authors
KOVÁŘOVÁ, Anežka (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution), Martin GAJDOŠ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution), Ivan REKTOR (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution) and Michal MIKL (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution)
We wanted to verify the effect of combining multi-echo (ME) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with slice acceleration in simultaneous multi-slice acquisition. The aim was to shed light on the benefits of multiple echoes for various acquisition settings, especially for levels of slice acceleration and flip angle. Whole-brain ME fMRI data were obtained from 26 healthy volunteers (using three echoes; seven runs with slice acceleration 1, 4, 6, and 8; and two different flip angles for each of the first three acceleration factors) and processed as single-echo (SE) data and ME data based on optimal combinations weighted by the contrast-to-noise ratio. Global metrics (temporal signal-to-noise ratio, signal-to-noise separation, number of active voxels, etc.) and local characteristics in regions of interest were used to evaluate SE and ME data. ME results outperformed SE results in all runs; the differences became more apparent for higher acceleration, where a significant decrease in data quality is observed. ME fMRI can improve the observed data quality metrics over SE fMRI for a wide range of accelerated fMRI acquisitions.
Links
EF16_013/0001775, research and development project
Name: Modernizace a podpora výzkumných aktivit národní infrastruktury pro biologické a medicínské zobrazování Czech-BioImaging
LM2015062, research and development project
Name: Národní infrastruktura pro biologické a medicínské zobrazování
Investor: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the CR
LM2018129, research and development project
Name: Národní infrastruktura pro biologické a medicínské zobrazování Czech-BioImaging
Investor: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the CR