Compared to BOLD imaging, the detection of functional CBF changes by arterial spin labeling is difficult due to the inherently small signal changes in the range of one percent or less. We compared a multi-echo EPI readout to center-out EPI that achieves a very short TE. The reduction of the minimum TE from 9.3 ms (multi-echo EPI) to a value of 1.8 ms (center-out EPI) yielded significantly improved statistical power in the human visual cortex in addition to diminished confounding BOLD and physiological noise contributions.
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