Abstract #3320

High-Quality and High-Resolution fMRI Enabled by Multiplexed Parallel Reconstruction of Segmented EPI Data

Hing-Chiu Chang¹, Pooja Gaur², Ying-Hui Chou³, Nan-Kuei Chen¹

¹Brain Imaging and Analysis Center, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States; ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States; ³Brain Imaging and Analysis Center, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, United States

The spatial resolution of fMRI data can be significantly improved with segmented EPI acquisition, which is highly susceptible to undesirable aliasing artifacts originating from subtle subject motion, B0 drifting, and other types of signal inconsistencies among multiple EPI segments of each fMRI volume. These aliasing artifacts lead to increased time-domain signal fluctuation in dynamic segmented EPI scans. A novel algorithm, termed multiplexed parallel reconstruction, to effectively remove undesirable aliasing artifacts in segmented EPI based fMRI was reported to produce high-quality, high-resolution and high-SNR fMRI without relying on any external navigator signal.