Abstract #3639

Effect of Physiological Noise on Densely Sampled Multi-Echo fMRI Data

Mark Chiew^1,2, Simon James Graham^1,3

¹Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; ²Rotman Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; ³Imaging Research, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Multi-echo functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a technique capable of providing enhanced contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) data in blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) imaging experiments. Here, data is presented on the relationship between physiological noise correlations and the CNR benefits of densely sampled multi-echo fMRI over traditional fMRI acquisitions, such as echo-planar imaging. Data from Monte Carlo simulations and experiment are presented, and illustrate a decreasing power law dependence of CNR benefit vs. degree of noise correlation measured across echoes.