Impact of B 0 $$ {\mathrm{B}}_0 $$ field imperfections correction on BOLD sensitivity in 3D-SPARKLING fMRI data

Static and dynamic $B_0$ field imperfections are detrimental to functional MRI (fMRI) applications, especially at ultra-high magnetic fields (UHF). In this work, a field camera is used to assess the benefits of retrospectively correcting $B_0$ field perturbations on Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) sensitivity in non-Cartesian three-dimensional (3D)-SPARKLING fMRI acquisitions.

fMRI data were acquired at 1 mm ${}^3$ and for a 2.4s-TR while concurrently monitoring in real-time field perturbations using a Skope Clip-on field camera in a novel experimental setting involving a shorter TR than the required minimal TR of the field probes. Measurements of the dynamic field deviations were used along with a static $\Delta B_0$ map to retrospectively correct static and dynamic field imperfections, respectively. In order to evaluate the impact of such a correction on fMRI volumes, a comparative study was conducted on healthy volunteers.

Correction of $B_0$ deviations improved image quality and yielded between 20% and 30% increase in median temporal signal-to-noise ratio (tSNR).Using fMRI data collected during a retinotopic mapping experiment, we demonstrated a significant increase in sensitivity to the BOLD contrast and improved accuracy of the BOLD phase maps: 44% (resp., 159%) more activated voxels were retrieved when using a significance control level based on a p-value of 0.001 without correcting for multiple comparisons (resp., 0.05 with a false discovery rate correction).

3D-SPARKLING fMRI hugely benefits from static and dynamic $B_0$ imperfections correction. However, the proposed experimental protocol is flexible enough to be deployed on a large spectrum of encoding schemes, including arbitrary non-Cartesian readouts.