Dimo Ivanov1, Andreas Schfer1, Markus Streicher1, Robert Trampel1, Robert Turner1
1Department of Neurophysics, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
The goal of this study was to remove the scalp fat signal present in spin-echo BOLD EPI head acquisitions without using a fat suppression pulse. This was achieved by increasing the duration of the refocussing pulse to the T2* value of fat at 7 Tesla. This method has the advantage of reducing SAR in two ways - by eliminating the need for a fat saturation pulse and by decreasing the amplitude of the SAR intensive 180 degree pulse. The decrease in SAR results in doubled brain volume coverage for the same repetition time.