Event-Related Functional MRI at High Spatial & Temporal Resolution using UNFOLD

Sebastian Domsch¹, Patrick Heiler¹, Lothar Rudi Schad¹

UNFOLD has been recently applied to high resolution fMRI using a 3D-spiral sequence. The presented combination of UNFOLD with a simple Cartesian imaging sequence can be easily implemented and does not require regridding of k-space data. In this study, a modified multi-echo FLASH sequence was accelerated by UNFOLD to obtain high resolution 3D images covering half of the brain within 3 seconds. This multi-echo 3D-UNFOLD-FLASH was applied to an event-related finger tapping experiment. The goal was to validate feasibility of this technique for fMRI requiring both, high temporal and spatial resolution.