Balanced Stead-State Free Precession (bSSFP) techniques have been proposed as an alternative to GE-EPI to address the problem of co-registration between functional/structural scans at high field. However, 3D imaging is suboptimal for localized fMRI applications, and result in distortions, blurring, and increased sensitivity to motion/physiological noise. Here, we propose to use 2D-bSSFP and cartesian readouts and demonstrate that (i) bSSFP signal characteristics are preserved in a new steady-state, (ii) resting-state fMRI (RS-fMRI) can be performed with 2D-bSSFP, (iii) the 2D-bSSFP temporal SNR levels with that of 3D-bSSFP, resulting in - at least - equal fMRI performances at high field.
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