Slice-wise z-shimming for spinal cord fMRI with Shimming Toolbox

Spinal cord fMRI is challenging, in part due to B0 inhomogeneities. An EPI, z-shimming signal intensity based approach was implemented to automatically and dynamically shim the spinal cord. The technique was implemented in the open-source Shimming Toolbox. Z-shimming was tested on a healthy participant and showed a 14% increase in signal intensity as well as 19% increase in tSNR. The technique was generalized to allow for the use of any shim coil geometry as well as non-EPI data.