Improved BOLD activation using multiecho acquisition in simultaneous brain-spinal cord fMRI

Functional activation within brain has been studied extensively using fMRI. But limiting investigation to only the brain provides a truncated view of the human central nervous system as it does not capture information exchange between brain and body periphery through spinal cord. Simultaneous brain-spinal cord fMRI provides a means to measure motor and pain activity across the central nervous system. BOLD signal, especially in spinal cord, usually suffers from poor signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) which can cause difficulty in detecting activation. Here, we demonstrate that multiecho acquisition improves spinal cord BOLD detection.