Rapid full‐brain fMRI with an accelerated multi shot 3D EPI sequence using both UNFOLD and GRAPPA

Abstract The desire to understand complex mental processes using functional MRI drives development of imaging techniques that scan the whole human brain at a high spatial and temporal resolution. In this work, an accelerated multishot three‐dimensional echo‐planar imaging sequence is proposed to increase the temporal resolution of these studies. A combination of two modern acceleration techniques, UNFOLD and GRAPPA is used in the secondary phase encoding direction to reduce the scan time effectively. The sequence (repetition time of 1.02 s) was compared with standard two‐dimensional echo‐planar imaging (3 s) and multishot three‐dimensional echo‐planar imaging (3 s) sequences with both block design and event‐related functional MRI paradigms. With the same experimental setup and imaging time, the temporal resolution improvement with our sequence yields similar activation regions in the block design functional MRI paradigm with slightly increased t ‐scores. Moreover, additional information on the timing of rapid dynamic changes was extracted from accelerated images for the case of the event related complex mental paradigm. Magn Reson Med, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.