SSFP allows us to have functional contrast close to spin-echo, but it suffers from low temporal-resolution. Increasing tSNR can reduce this problem. Radial acquisition leads to an increase in signal due to noise and artifact suppression. We hypothesize that Radial acquisition, which is quite straightforward in SSFP-fMRI, can improve its tSNR through dense sampling of the central part of k-space. We tested this hypothesis for 5 healthy subjects using both Cartesian and Radial SSFP acquisitions. Results show that bSSFP with Radial acquisition is an alternative robust fMRI technique with an advantage of higher tSNR compared to Cartesian, once all imaging parameters are identical.
