Abstract #5438

Using Virtual Conjugate Coil reconstruction for statistical improvement in highly accelerated Simultaneous Multislice fMRI

Adam O. Kettinger^1,2, Petra Hermann¹, Pal Vakli¹, Martin Blaimer³, Kawin Setsompop^4,5,6, Stephan A. R. Kannengiesser⁷, Felix A. Breuer³, and Zoltan Vidnyanszky¹

¹Brain Imaging Centre, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, ²Department of Nuclear Techniques, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary, ³Magnetic Resonance and X-ray Imaging Department, Fraunhofer Development Center X-ray Technology (EZRT), Würzburg, Germany, ⁴Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, United States, ⁵Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ⁶Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, ⁷MR Application Predevelopment, Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany

Simultaneous multislice EPI is a popular acquisition method for high-temporal-resolution fMRI. However, at high acceleration factors, significant noise amplification could occur that can hinder the detection of activation. Using the Virtual Conjugate Coil concept, the g-factors of such measurements can be reduced. In this work we investigate the potential statistical improvement of using Virtual Conjugate Coil reconstruction in simultaneous multislice fMRI. Our results show that using Virtual Conjugate Coil reconstruction, first-level and group-level t-values, as well as first-level effect sizes and temporal signal-to-noise ratio are increased.

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