Zoomed GRAPPA (ZOOPPA) for Functional MRI

Robin Martin Heidemann¹, Dimo Ivanov¹, Robert Trampel¹, Fabrizio Fasano², Josef Pfeuffer³, Robert Turner¹

The increased SNR of ultra-high field MR scanners permits improved resolution of fMRI acquisitions. Unfortunately, both high field and high resolution amplify artifacts such as geometric distortions and blurring. Parallel imaging and zoomed imaging can each mitigate these effects. However, highly accelerated parallel imaging is affected by residual artifacts, while excessive zooming sacrifices spatial coverage. A robust combination of both methods is optimized here (Zoomed imaging with GRAPPA - ZOOPPA) to provide high quality single-shot EPI human brain images with reasonable coverage and an isotropic resolution of 0.65 mm.