Stefan Posse1,2, Radu Mutihac1,3,
Elena Ackley4, Jochen Rick5, Akio Yoshimoto6,
Maxim Zaitsev5, Oliver Speck7
1Neurology, University of
New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, United States; 2Electrical &
Computer Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, United
States; 3Electricity & Biophysics, Faculty of Physics,
University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania; 4Neurology,
University of New Mexico, United States; 5Radiology - Medical
Physics, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany; 6Polytechnic
Institute of New York University, New York, United States; 7Biomedical
Magnetic Resonance, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Magdeburg,
Germany
In this study we developed whole brain EVI on a clinical 3 T scanner using multiple-slab excitations and 3D spatial encoding within each slab to reduce geometrical distortion. Maximum t-score, extent of activation and percent BOLD signal change were significantly higher with EVI at TR: 280 ms compared to EPI, both using TurboFIRE software (p<0.05) in real-time and retrospectively, and using SPM8 (p<0.05). Excellent activation and strong signal changes in BA17/18 were measured at TR: 135 ms. Temporal pre-whitening procedures are required to remove temporal data correlation by autoregressive models, to improve statistical modeling.