Superior spatial fidelity of fMRI at ultrahigh magnetic field strengths (≥7T) in principle allows for resolving fine grained task-specific fMRI neurosignatures. Yet, spatial details of BOLD clusters are conventionally blurred by Gaussian smoothing. To preserve spatial details, spatial-adaptive non-local means (SANLM) denoising has been introduced in fMRI as an alternative to Gaussian smoothing. Here, we evaluate SANLM denoising at 7T. SANLM removes noise in homogeneous areas while maintaining edges. It prevents the spread of BOLD patterns between adjacent brain regions, but should be employed with caution, as its spatial detail is partially driven by the underlying anatomy.
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