Thomas Sushil John1, Michael Lustig2,3,
John Mark Pauly2
1Electrical Engineering , Stanford
University, Stanford, CA, United States; 2Electrical Engineering,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States; 3Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States
Echo
planar imaging (EPI) is the most widely used method for functional MRI.
However, functional images are often distorted because EPI is highly
sensitive to field inhomogeneities, eddy currents, and gradient delays.
Functional and neuro-anatomical registration is complicated by these
distortions and by the fact that functional and anatomical images are usually
obtained with different imaging sequences. This work investigates the use of
an optimized 3D flyback EPI trajectory with echo time shifting to obtain
functional and anatomical images that have minimal distortions and are
inherently co-registered.