Sheeba Arnold1, Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli2,
Steven Shannon1, John D. E. Gabrieli2, Christina
Triantafyllou1,3
1A.A. Martinos Imaging Center,
McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States; 2Deparment
of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, MA, United States; 3A.A.
Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, MGH,
Charlestown, MA, United States
Amongst the existing acquisition tools for functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI), 32-channel phased array head coil is yet to be evaluated at 3T. Our results demonstrate that in comparison to most commonly used receive coils (e.g. 12-channel) highly parallel multiple channel arrays offer increased sensitivity in detecting detailed connections in resting state networks such as the default mode network. Furthermore, the 32-channel coil proved to be significantly better than the 12-channel as revealed by graph theory analysis in terms of both global and local network efficiency.