Abstract #2674

Creating a robust BOLD fMRI phantom using microspheres: How well do microspheres approximate microvasculature?

Jacob Chausse¹, Avery J. L. Berman², Jonathan R. Polimeni², and J. Jean Chen^1,3

¹Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Health Sciences, North York, ON, Canada, ²A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States, ³Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

BOLD phantoms are important for the evaluation of fMRI acquisition techniques, but validating numerical simulations based on conventional random-cylinder models of the microvasculature is difficult because available phantoms lack the microstructure required to emulate these geometries. In comparison, a phantom using randomly positioned microspheres is a more feasible alternative, but it is still unclear how well microspheres approximate cylinders in their transverse relaxation behaviour. In this work, we use 3D Monte Carlo simulations to compare the behaviour of the two perturber types at 3 T.

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