Spin-echo fMRI can be highly advantageous compared to gradient-echo fMRI with respect to magnetic field inhomogeneity artefacts, but is seldomly used for BOLD imaging due to its inferior sensitivity. The presented spin-echo implementation of a highly accelerated gradient-echo fMRI pulse sequence therefore aims to improve the sensitivity of spin-echo fMRI while profiting from a reduction of inhomogeneity-induced artefacts. Preliminary measurements using a temporal resolution of 134 ms for whole brain imaging show less signal dropout when compared to the gradient-echo counterpart, as well as an increase in the number of significantly activated voxels compared to the unaccelerated readout.
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