Abstract #0631

Ultra-Fast fMRI of Human Visual Cortex using Echo-Shifted Magnetic Resonance Inverse Imaging

Wei-Tang Chang¹, Thomas Witzel², Kevin Wen-Kai Tsai¹, Wen-Jui Kuo³, Fa-Hsuan Lin¹

¹Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; ²Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA; ³Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

To ensure a good BOLD contrast with TE = 34 ms at 3T, the scanning time of magnetic resonance inverse imaging (InI) can be further shortened to 25 ms per volume by using the echo shifting technique. Here we demonstrated the feasibility of using echo-shifted InI (esInI) with an unprecedented temporal resolution (40 Hz / volume) to detect hemodynamic responses of human visual cortex. Validated by EPI, esInI was found with good spatial localization using the minimum norm estimation (MNE) for volumetric reconstruction.