Abstract #2802

Zhao Q, Limkeman M, Conway T, White K, McGregor K, Crosson B, Li Y

In BOLD-based fMRI, system noise source due to scanner instability reduces the contrast-to-noise ratio and adversely affects determination of hemodynamic response functions. The present study aims to characterize fMRI noise correlated to scanner instability experimentally, and to remove this noise in HRF deconvolution. A SMART PHANTOM BOLD simulator was used to calibrate the system noise from a Siemens Allegra 3T scanner. Human subjects were scanned in an event-related task paradigm. Based on the calibrations, the subjects HRF deconvolutions were denoised.