High-resolution blood volume-sensitive fMRI VASO can capture functional signal changes with high localization specivity compared to conventional BOLD sequences. However, it suffers from reduced sampling efficiencies and lower detection sensitivity. Here, we overcome these limitations by combining VASO contrasts with the high efficiency of multi-echo enabled spiral k-space sampling and CAIPI-optimized SMS acceleration. We find that spiral sampling enables faster VASO acquisitions than possible with Cartesian EPI sampling. For high spatial resolutions (1.25mm), we confirm that the proposed method is insensitive to large draining veins while having more stable fMRI signals (higher tSNR).
This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.