Katja Neumann1, Myung-Ho In1, Oliver Speck1
1Biomedical Magnetic Resonance, Otto-von-Guericke-University, Magdeburg, Germany
Functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) phase images of motor and visual stimulation and a breath hold condition obtained at 7 Tesla were processed using a stable phase preserving reconstruction method and analyzed using general linear model and independent component analysis. Phase changes upon activations have shown a comparable sensitivity as magnitude data. Temporally correlated magnitude and phase time courses of independent components were observed for motor stimulation; temporally anti-correlated time courses were observed for independent components of visual stimulation data. fMRI phase images may provide complementary information about spatial localization of brain activation and may also increase the detection sensitivity.