Sub-millimeter bSSFP BOLD-fMRI accelerated with 3D stack-of-spirals at 9.4 T

Description: Functional experiments were performed with an accelerated 3D stack-of-spirals sequence with water excitation for fat suppression. The resulting data were reconstructed using an iterative algorithm with corrections for system imperfections such as trajectory deviations and B0 inhomogeneity. In the first set of experiments, we evaluated the signal change and stability with respect to echo and repetition time for a full field checkerboard stimulus. To demonstrate the high spatio-temporal resolution of the developed method, the results of three optimized protocols at submillimeter resolution (0.6 mm isotropic and 0.8 mm isotropic) and at 1.2 mm isotropic resolution for whole brain coverage were shown. A full visual field checkerboard stimulus was presented in a simple block design starting with 20 s of resting period and followed by 10 s of stimulus presentation. Twelve cycles of the stimulus were presented during the individual functional experiments lasting about 6 minutes. mean functional volumes without smoothing from all subjects and GLM analysis using FEAT with smoothing (FWHM=resolution) are shared.

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