Jed Wingrove1, Stephen J Wastling1, Prantik Kundu2, Gareth Barker1, Donal Hill1, Owen O'Daly1, and Fernando Zelaya1
1Department of Neuroimaging, King's College London, London, United Kingdom, 2Brain Imaging Center, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, NY, United States
Resting state fMRI data is highly susceptible to low frequency noise fluctuations from motion and pulsatile physiological movement leading to inaccuracies in observed connectivity. In this study we directly compare conventional single echo EPI against a multi echo EPI (ME-EPI) acquisition and analysis method which denoises and cleans acquired fMRI time series. Task evoked and rs-fMRI data was acquired in 8 volunteers and showed improved spatial localisation and discrete clustering in ME-EPI analysis in comparison to single echo data. Furthermore, this work demonstrates the benefits of using ME-EPI for both functional activation and resting state connectivity investigations.
