Abstract #0709

Blood-volume imaging using GRASE-VASO at ultra-high field for layer specific fMRI in human brain

Tetiana Dadakova¹, Alexander Beckett¹, An Thanh Vu², Jonathan Polimeni^3,4,5, and David Feinberg^1,6

¹Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, ²Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases, Veteran Affairs Health Care System, San Francisco, CA, United States, ³Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States, ⁴Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ⁵Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, ⁶Advanced MRI Technologies, LLC, Sebastopol, CA, United States

Cortical layer-dependent fMRI opens new possibilities for studying neuronal circuitry. Gradient-echo BOLD contrast, which is commonly used for fMRI, suffers from decreased spatial specificity due to BOLD contrast arising in large draining veins. Vascular space occupancy (VASO) and gradient and spin echo (GRASE) acquisition techniques were shown to improve spatial specificity. Here, the technique to acquire BOLD-corrected GRASE-VASO images and its application to fMRI in human motor cortex at 7T are presented. The results suggest increased spatial specificity as compared to EPI-VASO, which could be beneficial for layer-dependent fMRI applications.

This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.

Join Here