Abstract #2063

Multi-Echo Magnetic Resonance Inverse Imaging Improves the Sensitivity of BOLD Signal Detection

Kevin Wen-Kai Tsai¹, Thomas Witzel², Wei-Jui Kuo³, Fa-Hsuan Lin¹,²

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

Functional MRI experiments using EPI should tune the echo time (TE) to local T2* value in order to optimize the BOLD signal sensitivity. Since the T2* values are different across the whole brain, acquisitions using one single TE may not be optimal. Using experimental data, we demonstrate that, the InI can use different TEs across acquisitions to improve the sensitivity of detecting BOLD signal and obtain hemodynamic response estimates of 100 ms temporal sampling, reasonable spatial resolution, and whole-brain coverage.