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Abstract #3472

Combined Interactions of Respiratory and Cardiac Signals Measured by High-Temporal Resolution FMRI

Pierre LeVan1, Thimo Grotz1, Benjamin Zahneisen1, Maxim Zaitsev1, Juergen Hennig1

1Medical Physics, University Hospital Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany


This study investigates the effect of respiratory and cardiac artifacts in the fMRI signal using very high-temporal resolution acquisitions (TR=80ms). It is shown that high-order harmonics of the respiratory (up to order 5) and cardiac (up to order 10) signals account for widespread, statistically significant effects in the fMRI signal (p<0.05). Moreover, the amplitude of the cardiac artifact is shown to be significantly modulated by the respiratory signal. This effect was seen in 81% of the studied brain volume in 7 healthy subjects. The proper modeling of these artifacts could increase the sensitivity of fMRI studies.