Yongquan Ye1, Yan Zhuo1, Rong Xue1, Dehe Weng1,2, Xiaohong Joe Zhou3
1State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, CAS, Beijing, China; 2Siemens Mindit Magnetic Resonance Ltd., Shenzhen, China; 3University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA
Turbo spin echo (TSE) has been proposed as an alternative to echo planar imaging (EPI) for fMRI. We have used a modified HASTE (mHASTE) sequence with GRAPPA to investigate TSE signal characteristics in fMRI and compared the results with gradient-echo and spin-echo EPI. mHASTE exhibited reliable and consistent activation with higher SNR than EPI and minimal artifacts. More interestingly, we have observed evidence suggesting that BOLD signals in mHASTE can be dominated by extravascular contributions around microvascular networks, which offers more accurate localization of neurofunctional activities.