Steen Moeller1, Essa Yacoub1, Eddie Auerbach1, Cheryl Ohlman1, Kamil Ugurbil1
1Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Whole brain fMRI at ultra high field with large reduction factors requires accurate treatment of the sparsely sampled data. While maintaining conventional techniques for unalasing, the effects of only using 5x4 GRAPPA kernel size are demonstrated for 4x4 aliasing. Larger kernels must be used to capture the more complex sensitivity profiles. The correct use of navigator echoes for ACS data is also investigated. Significant image improvements are demonstrated in rapid whole brain coverage using 16 fold acceleration, with 4 fold originating from simultaneous acquisition of multiple slices, enhancing our ability to perform rapid, whole brain fMRI at ultrahigh fields like 7T.