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PURPOSE: Severe geometric distortions induced by tissue susceptibility, water-fat chemical shift, and eddy currents pose a substantial obstacle in single-shot EPI, especially for high-resolution imaging at ultrahigh field. View angle tilting (VAT)-EPI can mitigate in-plane distortion. However, the accompanied strong image blurring prevented its widespread applications. On the other hand, point-spread function mapping (PSF)-EPI can correct distortion and blurring accurately but requires prolonged scan time. We present fused VAT-PSF-EPI and possibilities for acceleration. METHODS: MR signal equations were explicitly derived to quantify image blurring in VAT-EPI and the maximum acceleration capacity in VAT-PSF-EPI. To validate the theoretical prediction, phantom measurements with varying in-plane parallel imaging factors, slice thicknesses, and RF pulses were conducted at 7 Tesla. In addition, in vivo human brain scans were acquired with T2 and diffusion weighting to assess distortion and blurring correction. RESULTS: VAT can effectively suppress distortion, and the introduced image blurring is corrected through PSF encoding. Up to fourfold acceleration (only 5 shots) in VAT-PSF-EPI was achieved compared with standard PSF-EPI without VAT. VAT-induced signal loss was mitigated by adjusting the sequence parameters and EPI resolution. In vivo T2 -weighted EPI data with 1.4 mm3 resolution demonstrate immunity to water-fat chemical shift-induced distortion. Very high-spatial resolution diffusion-weighted EPI (0.7 × 0.7 × 2.8 mm3 and 1.2 mm3 ) demonstrates the immunity to eddy current-induced distortion. CONCLUSION: VAT-PSF-EPI is a novel spin-echo EPI-based sequence for fast high-resolution diffusion imaging at ultrahigh field.

International audience; The simultaneous multi-slice EPI (SMS-EPI, a.k.a. MB-EPI) sequence has met immense popularity recently in functional neuroimaging. A still less common alternative is the use of 3D-EPI, which offers similar acceleration capabilities. The aim of this work was to compare the SMS-EPI and the 3D-EPI sequences in terms of sampling strategies for the detection of task-evoked activations at 7T using detection theory. To this end, the spatial and temporal resolutions of the sequences were matched (1.6 mm isotropic resolution, TR = 1200 ms) and their excitation profiles were homogenized by means of calibration-free parallel-transmission (Universal Pulses). We used a fast-event "localizer" paradigm of 5:20 min in order to probe sensorimotor functions (visual, auditory and motor tasks) as well as higher level functions (language comprehension, mental calculation), where results from a previous large-scale study at 3T (N = 81) served as ground-truth reference for the brain areas implicated in each cognitive function. In the current study, ten subjects were scanned while their activation maps were generated for each cognitive function with the GLM analysis. The SMS-EPI and 3D-EPI sequences were compared in terms of raw tSNR, t-score testing for the mean signal, activation strength and accuracy of the robust sensorimotor functions. To this end, the sensitivity and specificity of these contrasts were computed by comparing their activation maps to the reference brain areas obtained in the 3T study. Estimated flip angle distributions in the brain reported a normalized root mean square deviation from the target value below 10% for both sequences. The analysis of the t-score testing for the mean signal revealed temporal noise correlations, suggesting the use of this metric instead of the traditional tSNR for testing fMRI sequences. The SMS-EPI and 3D-EPI thereby yielded similar performance from a detection theory perspective.

State-of-the-art simultaneous-multi-slice (SMS-)EPI and 3D-EPI share several properties that benefit functional MRI acquisition. Both sequences employ equivalent parallel imaging undersampling with controlled aliasing to achieve high temporal sampling rates. As a volumetric imaging sequence, 3D-EPI offers additional means of acceleration complementary to 2D-CAIPIRINHA sampling, such as fast water excitation and elliptical sampling. We performed an application-oriented comparison between a tailored, six-fold CAIPIRINHA-accelerated 3D-EPI protocol at 530 ms temporal and 2.4 mm isotropic spatial resolution and an SMS-EPI protocol with identical spatial and temporal resolution for whole-brain resting-state fMRI at 3 T. The latter required eight-fold slice acceleration to compensate for the lack of elliptical sampling and fast water excitation. Both sequences used vendor-supplied on-line image reconstruction. We acquired test/retest resting-state fMRI scans in ten volunteers, with simultaneous acquisition of cardiac and respiration data, subsequently used for optional physiological noise removal (nuisance regression). We found that the 3D-EPI protocol has significantly increased temporal signal-to-noise ratio throughout the brain as compared to the SMS-EPI protocol, especially when employing motion and nuisance regression. Both sequence types reliably identified known functional networks with stronger functional connectivity values for the 3D-EPI protocol. We conclude that the more time-efficient 3D-EPI primarily benefits from reduced parallel imaging noise due to a higher, actual k-space sampling density compared to SMS-EPI. The resultant BOLD sensitivity increase makes 3D-EPI a valuable alternative to SMS-EPI for whole-brain fMRI at 3 T, with voxel sizes well below 3 mm isotropic and sampling rates high enough to separate dominant cardiac signals from BOLD signals in the frequency domain.

Purpose To develop a reconstruction pipeline that intrinsically accounts for both simultaneous multislice echo planar imaging (SMS-EPI) reconstruction and dynamic slice-specific Nyquist ghosting correction in time-series data. Methods After 1D slice-group average phase correction, the separate polarity (i.e., even and odd echoes) SMS-EPI data were unaliased by slice GeneRalized Autocalibrating Partial Parallel Acquisition. Both the slice-unaliased even and odd echoes were jointly reconstructed using a model-based framework, extended for SMS-EPI reconstruction that estimates a 2D self-phase map, corrects dynamic slice-specific phase errors, and combines data from all coils and echoes to obtain the final images. Results The percentage ghost-to-signal ratios (%GSRs) and its temporal variations for MB3Ry 2 with a field of view/4 shift in a human brain obtained by the proposed dynamic 2D and standard 1D phase corrections were 1.37 ± 0.11 and 2.66 ± 0.16, respectively. Even with a large regularization parameter λ applied in the proposed reconstruction, the smoothing effect in fMRI activation maps was comparable to a very small Gaussian kernel size 1 × 1 × 1 mm3 . Conclusion The proposed reconstruction pipeline reduced slice-specific phase errors in SMS-EPI, resulting in reduction of GSR. It is applicable for functional MRI studies because the smoothing effect caused by the regularization parameter selection can be minimal in a blood-oxygen-level-dependent activation map.

To describe a model-based reconstruction strategy for single-shot echo planar imaging (EPI) that intrinsically accounts for k-space nonuniformity, Nyquist ghosting, and geometric distortions during rather than before or after image reconstruction.Ramp sampling and inhomogeneous B0 field-induced distortion cause the EPI samples to lie on a non-Cartesian grid, thus requiring the nonuniform fast Fourier transform. Additionally, a 2D Nyquist ghost phase correction without the need for extra navigator acquisition is included in the proposed reconstruction. Coil compression is also incorporated to reduce the computational load. The proposed method is applied to phantom and human brain MRI data.The results demonstrate that Nyquist ghosting and geometric distortions are reduced by the proposed reconstruction. The proposed 2D phase correction is superior to a conventional 1D correction. The reductions of both artifacts lead to improved temporal signal-to-noise ratio (tSNR). The virtual coil results suggest that the processing time can be reduced by up to 75%, with a mean tSNR loss of only 3.2% when using 8-virtual instead of 32-physical coils for twofold undersampled data.The proposed reconstruction improves the quality (ghosting, geometry, and tSNR) of EPI without requiring calibration data for Nyquist ghost correction. Magn Reson Med 78:2250-2264, 2017. © 2017 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

High-resolution diffusion MRI can provide the ability to resolve small brain structures, enabling investigations of detailed white matter architecture. A major challenge for in vivo high-resolution diffusion MRI is the low signal-to-noise ratio. In this work, we combine two highly compatible methods, ultra-high field and three-dimensional multi-slab acquisition to improve the SNR of high-resolution diffusion MRI. As each kz plane is encoded using a single-shot echo planar readout, scan speeds of the proposed technique are similar to the commonly used two-dimensional diffusion MRI. In-plane parallel acceleration is applied to reduce image distortions. To reduce the sensitivity of auto-calibration signal data to subject motion and respiration, several new adaptions of the fast low angle excitation echo-planar technique (FLEET) that are suitable for 3D multi-slab echo planar imaging are proposed and evaluated. A modified reconstruction scheme is proposed for auto-calibration with the most robust method, Slice-FLEET acquisition, to make it compatible with navigator correction of motion induced phase errors. Slab boundary artefacts are corrected using the nonlinear slab profile encoding method recently proposed by our group. In vivo results demonstrate that using 7T and three-dimensional multi-slab acquisition with improved auto-calibration signal acquisition and nonlinear slab boundary artefacts correction, high-quality diffusion MRI data with ~1 mm isotropic resolution can be achieved., Highlights • High-resolution (1 mm) in vivo diffusion MRI with high SNR. • 3D multi-slab acquisition at 7T for high SNR efficiency. • Motion-robust parallel imaging kernel for 3D multi-slab acquisition. • Reducing slab boundary artefacts using nonlinear slab profile encoding. • High-quality fibre tractography with excellent anatomical fidelity.

To investigate a method for rapid water excitation with minimal radiofrequency power deposition for efficient functional MRI at ultrahigh fields.The suitability of the spectral response of a single rectangular radiofrequency pulse (rect) as a replacement of conventional fat saturation in segmented three-dimensional (3D) echo planar imaging (EPI) is explored. A pulse duration formula for lipid signal nulling independent of the small-tip-angle approximation is derived and tested by means of simulations and experiments at 3 and 7 Tesla (T).Compared with conventional binomial-11 water excitation, the single rect method is more selective and less sensitive to shim imperfections. In functional MRI, a significant measurement speedup (25%) and specific absorption rate reduction (from 44% to 1% at 7T) compared with conventional fat saturation are achieved. Furthermore, magnetization transfer effects are reduced resulting in up to 25% higher brain tissue signal-to-noise ratio.The proposed method is well suited for whole-brain functional MRI, not only at ultra-high fields, as it maximizes the sensitivity per unit time and at the same time minimizes radiofrequency power deposition. It requires little implementation effort and may thus be used in other spatially nonselective imaging methods that require fat suppression at minimal specific absorption rate and time requirements. Magn Reson Med 76:1517-1523, 2016. © 2015 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

Background The human amygdala plays a crucial role in processing social signals, such as face expressions, particularly fearful ones, and facilitates responses to them in face-sensitive cortical regions. This contributes to social competence and individual amygdala size correlates with that of social networks. While rare patients with focal bilateral amygdala lesion typically show impaired recognition of fearful faces, this deficit is variable, and an intriguing possibility is that other brain regions can compensate to support fear and social signal processing. Methods To investigate the brain's functional compensation of selective bilateral amygdala damage, we performed a series of behavioral, psychophysiological, and functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments in two adult female monozygotic twins (patient 1 and patient 2) with equivalent, extensive bilateral amygdala pathology as a sequela of lipoid proteinosis due to Urbach-Wiethe disease. Results Patient 1, but not patient 2, showed preserved recognition of fearful faces, intact modulation of acoustic startle responses by fear-eliciting scenes, and a normal-sized social network. Functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that patient 1 showed potentiated responses to fearful faces in her left premotor cortex face area and bilaterally in the inferior parietal lobule. Conclusions The premotor cortex face area and inferior parietal lobule are both implicated in the cortical mirror-neuron system, which mediates learning of observed actions and may thereby promote both imitation and empathy. Taken together, our findings suggest that despite the pre-eminent role of the amygdala in processing social information, the cortical mirror-neuron system may sometimes adaptively compensate for its pathology.