Manus J. Donahue1,
William A. Grissom2
1Radiology
and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United
States; 2Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville,
TN, United States
The purpose of this study is to develop and implement tailored radiofrequency (RF) excitation and refocusing pulses at 7T to allow for robust detection of R2-weighted spin echo (SE) blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) activity in multiple brain regions. A 150% improvement in spatial specificity and 52% improvement in CNR was demonstrated for 7T SE BOLD performed using tailored spokes and kT point refocusing pulses compared with a standard sequence using sinc-excitation and composite refocusing.