Motivation: Spinal cord fMRI is crucial for understanding brain-spinal cord connectivity in pain and motor processing but suffers from low signal-to-noise ratio and motion artifacts. Improved methods are needed to accurately detect spinal cord activation. Goal(s): This study investigates whether multiecho cardiac-gated fMRI improves activation detection compared to single-echo in simultaneous brain-spinal cord imaging. Approach: Using multiecho and single-echo cardiac-gated fMRI on healthy volunteers, we compared BOLD activation sensitivity in brain and spinal cord regions. Results: Multiecho cardiac-gating showed superior activation detection across regions, with higher sensitivity and effective reduction of physiological noise in the spinal cord. Impact: This study demonstrates that multiecho cardiac-gated fMRI enhances spinal cord activation detection, enabling more precise brain-spinal cord connectivity mapping. This advancement could refine clinical assessments of pain and motor disorders, driving further exploration of physiological noise reduction techniques in neuroimaging.
Law et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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