Valur Olafsson1, Jia Guo1, Chi Wah Wong1, Prantik Kundu2, Souheil Inati3, Wen-Ming Luh3, Vinai Roopchansingh3, Noah Brenowitz2, Peter Bandettini2, 3, Eric Wong1, Thomas Liu1
1UCSD Center for Functional MRI, La Jolla, CA, United States; 2Section on Functional Imaging Methods, NIMH, Bethesda, MD, United States; 3Functional MRI Facility, NIMH, Bethesda, MD, United States
Motion and physiological noise confounds are key factors that limit the sensitivity of resting-state functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI) measures. The acquisition of multiple echoes has been shown to be effective for automatically identifying and removing these confounds. However, the acquisition of multiple echoes requires additional readout time and leads to a decrease in temporal resolution. To address this issue, we have used a simultaneous multislice excitation strategy to compensate for the extra readout time and achieve whole brain coverage with 3 echoes, 2 mm isotropic resolution, and a TR of 2 seconds.