Jianqi Li1, Lijia Wang1, Yi Wang2,3
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Department of Physics, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China; 2Department of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; 3Department of Radiology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, USA
A 32-channel 3T receive-only phased-array head coil was recently developed for human brain imaging and showed significantly increased image signal-noise-ratio in the cortex. In this study, the activated volume in visual BOLD-fMRI was evaluated at different spatial resolutions with a 32 channel WIP phased-array coil and a commercial 12 channel coil at 3T MRI system. It was found that the 32 channel coil is beneficial for fMRI at high spatial resolution but may not provide significant benefit at lower spatial resolution.