Parallel transmit (pTx) has developed in recent years to show promising reductions in signal dropouts and imaging artifacts from B1+ field inhomogeneities in 7T MRI. However, pTx methods have rarely been applied for functional MRI. To our knowledge, no published task fMRI study has used pTx with online pulse calculation. We therefore implemented pTx spokes excitation in our vendor’s product EPI sequence, and tested it in volunteers using two different task-based fMRI paradigms. Comparing with CP+ (or “TrueForm”) mode, using pTx spokes pulses significantly improved both the tSNR and fCNR in task-based fMRI acquisitions at 7T.
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