Abstract #1550

Comparison of Single-Shot 2D EPI and Segmented 3D EVI Acquisition for FMRI at 7T

Wietske van der Zwaag^1,2, Tobias Kober^1,3, Jose Pedro Marques^1,2, Gary Glover⁴, Rolf Gruetter^1,5, Gunnar Krueger³

¹LIFMET, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland; ²UNIL , Lausanne, Switzerland; ³Advanced Clinical Imaging Technology, Siemens Suisse SA - CIBM, Lausanne, Switzerland; ⁴Stanford University, Stanford, USA; ⁵UNIL/UNIG, Lausanne/Geneva, Switzerland

Single shot and segmented 3D echo volumar imaging (EVI) acquisitions have a great potential for high spatio-temporal fMRI. Here, we compare multi-slice 2D EPI and segmented 3D EVI acquisitions with respect to performance in fMRI experiments and physiological noise properties at 7T. The maximum z-score and size of active regions in activation maps were found to increase significantly with 3D acquisitions. However, the asymptotic limit of temporal-SNR is lower for 3D than for 2D acquisitions. fMRI protocols using segmented EVI at high B0 should take this into account by, for example, using a small voxel size.