Title
Improved shimming for fMRI specifically optimizing the local BOLD sensitivity.
Abstract
In functional MRI, magnetic field inhomogeneities due to air-tissue susceptibility differences may lead to severe signal dropouts and geometric distortions in echo-planar images. Therefore, the inhomogeneities in the field are routinely minimized by shimming prior to imaging. However in fMRI, the Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) effect is the measure of interest, so the BOLD sensitivity (BS) should be optimized rather than the magnetic field homogeneity. The analytical expression for an estimate of the BOLD sensitivity has been recently developed, allowing for the computation of BOLD sensitivity maps from echo-planar images and field maps. This report describes a novel shimming procedure that optimizes the local BOLD sensitivity over a region of interest. The method is applied in vivo and compared to a standard global shimming procedure. A breath-holding experiment was carried out and demonstrated that the BS-based shimming significantly improved the detection of activation in a target region of interest, the medial orbitofrontal cortex.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.08.010
NeuroImage
Keywords
Field
DocType
BOLD sensitivity,Shimming,fMRI,EPI
Nuclear medicine,Pattern recognition,Blood-oxygen-level dependent,Cognitive psychology,Psychology,Shim (magnetism),Artificial intelligence,Orbitofrontal cortex,Region of interest,Communication noise,Magnetic resonance imaging
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
49
1
1053-8119
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.36
8
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Evelyne Balteau1535.08
C Hutton2273131.38
Nikolaus Weiskopf381966.86