Open AccessContribution of the multi‐echo approach in accelerated functional magnetic resonance imaging multiband acquisition
Author(s) -
Kovářová Anežka,
Gajdoš Martin,
Rektor Ivan,
Mikl Michal
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
human brain mapping
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.005
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1097-0193
pISSN - 1065-9471
DOI - 10.1002/hbm.25698
Subject(s) - acceleration , functional magnetic resonance imaging , voxel , signal to noise ratio (imaging) , noise (video) , communication noise , flip angle , signal (programming language) , magnetic resonance imaging , computer science , data acquisition , artificial intelligence , nuclear magnetic resonance , physics , computer vision , optics , psychology , neuroscience , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , classical mechanics , image (mathematics) , radiology , programming language , operating system
We wanted to verify the effect of combining multi‐echo (ME) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with slice acceleration in simultaneous multi‐slice acquisition. The aim was to shed light on the benefits of multiple echoes for various acquisition settings, especially for levels of slice acceleration and flip angle. Whole‐brain ME fMRI data were obtained from 26 healthy volunteers (using three echoes; seven runs with slice acceleration 1, 4, 6, and 8; and two different flip angles for each of the first three acceleration factors) and processed as single‐echo (SE) data and ME data based on optimal combinations weighted by the contrast‐to‐noise ratio. Global metrics (temporal signal‐to‐noise ratio, signal‐to‐noise separation, number of active voxels, etc.) and local characteristics in regions of interest were used to evaluate SE and ME data. ME results outperformed SE results in all runs; the differences became more apparent for higher acceleration, where a significant decrease in data quality is observed. ME fMRI can improve the observed data quality metrics over SE fMRI for a wide range of accelerated fMRI acquisitions.