Abstract #1580

Quantification of Parenchymal T1 in the Activated Visual Cortex in Grey Matter Nulled and VASO FMRI Images

Yuji Shen¹, Ida Mengyi Pu², Risto A. Kauppinen³, Xavier Golay⁴

¹School of Medicine, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK; ²Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK; ³Biomedical NMR Research Center, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH 03755, USA; ⁴Department of Brain Repair and Rehabilitation, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK

We examined spatial overlap and T1 values of the activated voxels revealed by grey matter nulled (GMN) and vascular space occupancy (VASO) fMRI techniques in the human visual cortex at 3T. Both fMRI techniques are designed to reveal blood volume changes during brain activation. It was found that the activated voxels by GMN and VASO fMRI methods overlap only by ~10%. Baseline T1 values in activated voxels were 1608 283 ms and 1247 214 ms for GMN and VASO fMRI, respectively, suggesting that these fMRI techniques probe different parenchymal compartments.