Abstract #3951

The impact of gradient spoiling on the temporal stability of rapid 2D BOLD EPI

Avery J.L. Berman^1,2, Yulin E. Chang³, Jingyuan Chen¹, and Jonathan R. Polimeni^1,2,4

¹Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States, ²Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ³Siemens Medical Solutions USA Inc., Charlestown, MA, United States, ⁴Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States

Short-TR BOLD fMRI studies have increased in popularity due to the advancement of simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) techniques and the many advantages afforded by rapid sampling. However, in rapid imaging of a single slice, disruptions to the steady-state from physiological sources can result in large temporal variability in long-T2 tissues, primarily around cerebrospinal fluid. We investigated the sources of this variability and how they translate from single-slice to whole-brain SMS-based fMRI. Inflow was the primary source of temporal instability, and this was significantly reduced both by the “intrinsic spoiling” from imaging gradients and by the excitation of contiguous slices, indicating that these fluctuations are largely suppressed in most conventional multiple-slice fMRI studies.

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