Stefan Posse1, 2, Elena Ackley1
1Neurology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, United States; 2Electrical and Computer Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, United States
Real-time fMRI using multi-slab echo volumar imaging was performed with temporal resolution of 286 ms for whole brain acquisition and 136 ms for partial brain acquisition on a clinical 3 Tesla MRI scanner equipped with 12-channel head coil. Whole brain EVI with 286 ms temporal resolution of visual and motor tasks significantly increased average and maximum percent BOLD signal change, average and maximum t-score, and extent of activation compared with EPI. Partial brain EVI with 136 ms temporal resolution exhibited comparable percent signal change, enabled nonaliased detection of heartbeat correlated signal fluctuation and improved sampling of the hemodynamic response function.