Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) Flow Suppressed Spinal Cord Functional MRI Using Multi-Slice DANTE-EPI

Linqing Li¹, Yazhuo Kong¹, Jonathan Brooks¹, Karla Miller¹, Peter Jezzard¹

DANTE pulse trains (a rapid series of low flip angle RF pulses interspersed with gradients) can attenuate moving CSF signal and preserve most of the static tissue signal. Here, we propose a method that employs DANTE preparation for CSF flow suppression in multi-slice spinal cord fMRI. Compared to a conventional EPI spinal cord sequence, the temporal variance within the spinal cord was decreased. Improved activation patterns were observed using a block-design finger tapping task.