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Potential Benefit of Multiband Multiecho EPI for Resting-state Functional MRI in Alzheimer's disease on a compact 3T system: A Preliminary study

Daehun Kang¹, Myung-Ho In¹, Erin Gray¹, Thomas K Foo², Radhika Madhavan², Nolan K Meyer¹, Lydia J Bardwell Speltz¹, Zaki Ahmed¹, Jeffrey Gunter¹, Brice Fernandez³, Joshua D Trzasko¹, John Huston¹, Matt A Bernstein¹, and Yunhong Shu¹
¹Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States, ²GE Global Research, Niskayuna, NY, United States, ³GE Healthcare, Buc, France

T₂^*-weighted-combined multi-echo EPI is well-suited for fMRI of subjects with dementing illnesses such Alzheimer's disease due to improvements in TSNR and BOLD contrast sensitivity especially regions with high iron-deposits or substantial brain atrophy.

Fig. 5. Individual examples from a AD subject and a healthy subject: functional connectivity derived from left posterior cingulate cortex (pCC) and left caudate as seeded region respectively.

Fig. 4. Four ROIs defined on a brain template are selected as study regions on both the SE and ME images obtained from AD patients and healthy control subjects. (A,B) averages of images intensity and the intensities normalized to those in pCC are evaluated in the ROIs. (C) temporal SNR and (D) the measured regional T₂^* are plotted. Signal dropout and TSNR were improved by using the ME combined images compared to the SE images only images.