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Functional magnetic resonance imaging with an ultrashort echo time
Author(s) -
Kim MinJi,
Jahng GeonHo,
Lee SooYeol,
Ryu ChangWoo
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.4773035
Subject(s) - magnetic resonance imaging , medical imaging , nuclear magnetic resonance , physics , materials science , optics , medicine , radiology
Purpose: The purpose of the authors study was to investigate a functional MRI (fMRI) technique with an ultrashort echo‐time (UTE) sequence.Methods: An UTE‐based fMRI technique was applied to 17 young healthy volunteers during visual stimulations on a 3T MRI system. In addition, a blood oxygen level‐dependent (BOLD) fMRI image was also obtained to compare functional changes in the brain. The one‐sample t ‐test was performed to investigate increased or decreased signals during baseline and stimulation conditions for all subjects. Furthermore, regions‐of‐interest were placed by selecting one of the peak activated voxels from the UTE‐based and BOLD data to investigate the level of signal changes on the time‐course.Results: During the visual activation period, the decreased signals were shown in the visual cortex for the UTE‐based method, while both increased and decreased signals were found in the cortex for the BOLD method. The averaged signal changes for the UTE‐based data were −0.48 ± 0.37% in the left lingual gyrus, while the changes on the BOLD data were 1.71 ± 0.87% in the right lingual gyrus.Conclusions: The UTE‐based fMRI technique can detect the neuronal activity corresponding to neuronal function. The UTE‐based method should be able to improve spatial localization and has much lower sensitivity to field inhomogeneities. Therefore, UTE‐based fMRI can be useful to the neurosciences and clinical populations.