Asymmetric spin-echo (ASE) spiral improves BOLD fMRI in inhomogeneous regions.
NMR Biomed
; 22(6): 654-62, 2009 Jul.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-19382109
ABSTRACT
Functional MRI (fMRI) is of limited use in areas such as the orbitofrontal and inferior temporal lobes due to the presence of local susceptibility-induced field gradients (SFGs), which result in severe image artifacts. Several techniques have been developed to reduce these artifacts, the most common being the dual-echo spiral sequences (spiral-in/out and spiral-in/in). In this study, a new multiple spiral acquisition technique was developed, in which the later spiral acquisitions are acquired asymmetrically with the peak of a spin-echo causing increased R(2)-weighting but matched R(2)'-weighting. This sequence, called asymmetric spin-echo (ASE) spiral, has demonstrated significant improvements in minimizing the signal loss and increasing the image quality as well as optimal blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD)-weighting. The ASE spiral is compared to conventional spiral-out using both signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and whole brain fMRI activation volumes from a breath-hold task acquired at 4 Tesla. The ASE dual spiral has exhibited SNR increases of up to 300% in areas where strong SFGs are present. As a result, the ASE spiral is highly efficient for recovering lost activation in areas of SFGs, as demonstrated by a 16% increase in the total number of activated voxels over the whole brain. Post spin-echo ASE spiral images have decreasing SNR due to R(2) signal losses, however the increase in R(2)-weighting leads to a higher percentage of signal changes producing ASE spiral images with equivalent contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) for each echo. The use of this sequence allows for recovery of BOLD activation in areas of SFG without sacrificing the CNR over the whole brain.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Encéfalo
/
Mapeamento Encefálico
/
Imageamento por Ressonância Magnética
/
Aumento da Imagem
Tipo de estudo:
Evaluation_studies
Limite:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Idioma:
En
Revista:
NMR Biomed
Assunto da revista:
DIAGNOSTICO POR IMAGEM
/
MEDICINA NUCLEAR
Ano de publicação:
2009
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Canadá