Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 7, 2026
High-resolution Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Methods for Human Midbrain
Published on: May 10, 2012
Evaluation of SLIce Dithered Enhanced Resolution Simultaneous MultiSlice (SLIDER-SMS) for human fMRI
An T Vu1, Alex Beckett2, Kawin Setsompop3
1San Francisco VA Health Care System, Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Disease, San Francisco, CA, United States; University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States; Advanced MRI Technologies, Sebastopol, CA, United States.
Abstract:
High isotropic resolution fMRI is challenging primarily due to long repetition times (TR) and insufficient SNR, especially at lower field strengths. Recently, Simultaneous Multi-Slice (SMS) imaging with blipped-CAIPI has substantially reduced scan time and improved SNR efficiency of fMRI. Similarly, super-resolution techniques utilizing sub- voxel spatial shifts in the slice direction have increased both resolution and SNR efficiency. Here we demonstrate the synergistic combination of SLIce Dithered Enhanced Resolution (SLIDER) and SMS for high-resolution, high-SNR whole brain fMRI in comparison to standard resolution fMRI data as well as high-resolution data. With SLIDER-SMS, high spatial frequency information is recovered (unaliased) even in absence of super-resolution deblurring algorithms. Additionally we find that BOLD CNR (as measured by t-value in a visual checkerboard paradigm) is improved by as much as 100% relative to traditionally acquired high- resolution data. Using this gain in CNR, we are able to obtain unprecedented nominally isotropic resolutions at 3T (0.66 mm) and 7T (0.45 mm).
