Michael E. Kelly1,
Eugene P. Duff1, Janine D. Bijsterbosch1, Natalie L.
Voets1, Nicola Filippini1, Steen Moeller2,
Junqian Xu2, Essa S. Yacoub2, Edward J. Auerbach2,
Kamil Ugurbil2, Stephen M. Smith1, Karla L. Miller1
1FMRIB
Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; 2Center for Magnetic
Resonance Research, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN,
United States
Multiband (MB) EPI is a recent MRI technique that offers increased temporal and/or spatial resolution as well as increased temporal SNR due to increased temporal degrees-of-freedom (DoF). However, MB-EPI may exhibit increased motion sensitivity due to the combination of short TR with parallel imaging. In this study, the performance of MB-EPI with different acceleration factors was compared to that of standard EPI, with respect to subject motion. Although MB-EPI with 4 and 8 times acceleration exhibited some motion sensitivity, retrospective clean-up of the data using independent component analysis was successful at removing artefacts. By increasing temporal DoF, accelerated MB-EPI supports higher spatial resolution, with no loss in statistical significance compared to standard EPI. MB-EPI is therefore an important new technique capable of providing high resolution, temporally rich FMRI datasets for more interpretable mapping of the brain's functional networks.