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Updated: Mar 22, 2026
Acquisition of Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data in the Rat
Published on: August 28, 2021
Improved Reliability of Resting-State Functional MRI Connectivity Using Multi-Echo Acquisition: Implications for
Elmira Hassanzadeh1, Rabeet Tariq2, Stephan Palm2
1From the Department of Radiology (E.H.), Psychiatry (S.P., N.C., D.L.), Neurology (S.K., M.D.F.), Psychiatry (S.H.S.), Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Aga Khan University Hospital (R.T.), Karachi, Pakistan; Department of Neurology (T.B.), Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (B.T.T.Y.), National University of Singapore, Singapore; N.1 Institute for Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Integrative Sciences and Engineering Programme (ISEP), National University of Singapore, Centre for Sleep and Cognition & Centre for Translational MR Research (R.K.), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Department of Medicine, Healthy Longevity Translational Research Programme, Human Potential Translational Research Programme & Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore ehassanzadeh@bwh.harvard.edu.
Background And Purpose:
Multi-echo (ME) functional MRI (fMRI) acquisition improves separation of signal from noise relative to single-echo (SE). We tested whether this enhances reliability of functional connectivity (FC), with a focus on personalizing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) targets in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in patients with depression.
Materials And Methods:
Resting-state fMRI scans were acquired from adult patients with major depression (20 female, 15 male) presenting for clinical TMS using either SE (n=21) or ME (n=31). Each subject's fMRI timeseries was split in half, and voxel-wise seed-based FC was computed for 100 general regions of interest (ROIs) and for two TMS-specific ROIs: subgenual cingulate cortex (SGC) and a previously published depression circuit (DEP). Reliability was assessed using (1) spatial correlation between split-half connectivity maps and (2) intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for each ROI's connectivity to the DLPFC.
Results:
In general ROI analysis, ME showed significantly higher whole-brain split-half correlations than SE (p = 0.006) and higher ICC (ΔICC = 0.16; p = 0.03). In TMS-specific ROI analysis, ME showed higher split-half correlations for both the SGC-DLPFC (p = 0.04) and DEP-DLPFC (p = 0.01). TMS-specific ICC values were numerically higher for ME (SGC-DLPFC: 0.47; DEP-DLPFC: 0.75) than for SE (0.02 and 0.40, respectively), although these differences were not statistically significant.
Conclusion:
ME fMRI improves general FC reliability over SE, with suggested advantages for TMS-specific measures. Future work is needed to determine whether these gains meaningfully improve TMS targeting.
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