Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 14, 2025
Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Multiple Sclerosis at 7.0 Tesla
Published on: February 19, 2021
Towards functional spin-echo BOLD line-scanning in humans at 7T
Luisa Raimondo1,2,3, Jurjen Heij4,5,6, Tomas Knapen4,5,6
1Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Meibergdreef 75, 1105 BK, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. l.raimondo@spinozacentre.nl.
Objective:
Neurons cluster into sub-millimeter spatial structures and neural activity occurs at millisecond resolutions; hence, ultimately, high spatial and high temporal resolutions are required for functional MRI. In this work, we implemented a spin-echo line-scanning (SELINE) sequence to use in high spatial and temporal resolution fMRI.
Materials And Methods:
A line is formed by simply rotating the spin-echo refocusing gradient to a plane perpendicular to the excited slice and by removing the phase-encoding gradient. This technique promises a combination of high spatial and temporal resolution (250 μm, 500 ms) and microvascular specificity of functional responses. We compared SELINE data to a corresponding gradient-echo version (GELINE).
Results:
We demonstrate that SELINE showed much-improved line selection (i.e. a sharper line profile) compared to GELINE, albeit at the cost of a significant drop in functional sensitivity.
Discussion:
This low functional sensitivity needs to be addressed before SELINE can be applied for neuroscientific purposes.
