Detecting Spine Movements with a Navigator Echo for Motion Correction of Spinal Cord fMRI

Motion correction is crucial for functional neuroimaging, however, not straightforward for applications in the cervical spinal cord because its shape, size, and inner structure barely vary along the cord’s axis. Previous spinal cord fMRI studies involved motion correction in this direction based on the vertebral disks visible in the fMRI acquisitions but for transverse slices, this approach suffers from a low spatial resolution (slice thickness typically 3.5mm or more). Here, a columnar navigator positioned along the spine is used to detect spine movements with a high spatial resolution that could be used for motion correction of spinal cord fMRI.