Multiplexed Echo Planar Imaging for Sub-Second Whole Brain FMRI and Fast Diffusion Imaging

By David A. Feinberg, Steen Moeller, Stephen M. Smith, E. Auerbach, S. Ramanna, Matthew F. Glasser, Karla L. Miller, Kamil Ugurbil, Essa Yacoub. PLoS ONE, 2010

1,349 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Echo planar imaging (EPI) is an MRI technique of particular value to neuroscience, with its use for virtually all functional MRI (fMRI) and diffusion imaging of fiber connections in the human brain. EPI generates a single 2D image in a fraction of a second; however, it requires 2–3 seconds to acquire multi-slice whole brain coverage for fMRI and even longer for diffusion imaging. Here we report on a large reduction in EPI whole brain scan time at 3 and 7 Tesla, without significantly sacrificing spatial resolution, and while gaining functional sensitivity. The multiplexed-EPI (M-EPI) pulse sequence combines two forms of multiplexing: temporal multiplexing (m) utilizing simultaneous echo refocused (SIR) EPI and spatial multiplexing (n) with multibanded RF pulses (MB) to achieve m×n images in an EPI echo train instead of the normal single image. This resulted in an unprecedented reduction in EPI scan time for whole brain fMRI performed at 3 Tesla, permitting TRs of 400 ms and 800 ms compared to a more conventional 2.5 sec TR, and 2–4 times reductions in scan time for HARDI imaging of neuronal fibertracks. The simultaneous SE refocusing of SIR imaging at 7 Tesla advantageously reduced SAR by using fewer RF refocusing pulses and by shifting fat signal out of the image plane so that fat suppression pulses were not required. In preliminary studies of resting state functional networks identified through independent component analysis, the 6-fold higher sampling rate increased the peak functional sensitivity by 60%. The novel M-EPI pulse sequence resulted in a significantly increased temporal resolution for whole brain fMRI, and as such, this new methodology can be used for studying non-stationarity in networks and generally for expanding and enriching the functional information.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ec95c12af7486d5eb8a48982a519855b6d5f91fc

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Citations in the corpus

Methods for cleaning the BOLD fMRI signal (2016, positive): “…protocols are adopted, such as MR-inverse imaging (Hennig et al., 2007; Kiviniemi et al., 2016; Lin et al., 2012) and simultaneous multislice (SMS) EPI (Feinberg et al., 2010; Moeller et al., 2010) (but see Scheel et al. (2014) for the need of physiological noise regression in SMS EPI data).”
Integrated strategy for improving functional connectivity mapping using multiecho fMRI (2013, background): “Single-echo multiband imaging may allow also denoising and tSNR increases with better resolution (19, 20).”
The Human Connectome Project: A data acquisition perspective (2012, methodology): “These can be combined into Multiplexed EPI (Feinberg et al., 2010).”
Improving diffusion MRI using simultaneous multi-slice echo planar imaging (2012, methodology): “Further reduction in acquisition time can be achieved by increasing the slice acceleration factor and/or by combining parallel imaging simultaneous multi-slice method with the SIR technique as shown in Feinberg et al. (2010); Setsompop et al. (2010).”
The future of FMRI connectivity (2012, methodology): “Indeed, resting and task-FMRI at 7 T is already seeing spectacular gains in spatial resolution and/or effective SNR. Additionally, several groups are producing exciting new work on accelerated FMRI, with the ability to achieve sub-second whole-brain imaging (Feinberg et al., 2010).”
Multimodal population brain imaging in the UK Biobank prospective epidemiological study (2016, neutral): “While this might not provide statistical certainty for a diagnosis or interventional recommendation, it should allow for single-patient imaging to be used in a similar way to current state-of-the-art patient-tuned genetic testing.”
Advances in diffusion MRI acquisition and processing in the Human Connectome Project (2013, methodology): “Amajor feature of the acquisition protocol involves acceleration using simultaneousmulti-slice echo planar imaging (EPI) withmultiband (MB) excitation and multiple receivers (Feinberg et al., 2010; Larkman et al., 2001; Moeller et al., 2010; Setsompop et al., 2012).”
Function in the Human Connectome: Task-fMRI and Individual Differences in Behavior (2013, background): “0 mm isotropic voxels, with a multi-band acceleration factor of 8 (Feinberg et al., 2010; Moeller et al., 2010).”
White matter integrity, fiber count, and other fallacies: The do's and don'ts of diffusion MRI (2013, background): “Moreover, recent developments such asmultiplexing (Feinberg et al., 2010; Reese et al., 2009) and compressed sensing Donoho et al.”
Benchmarking of participant‐level confound regression strategies for the control of motion artifact in studies of functional connectivity (2017, background): “, 2016) and multiband acquisition (Feinberg et al., 2010).”
Pushing the limits of in vivo diffusion MRI for the Human Connectome Project (2013, methodology): “(Feinberg et al., 2010; Setsompop et al., 2012) This combined method has been commonly referred to as Multiplexed EPI.”
Dynamic functional connectivity: Promise, issues, and interpretations (2013, methodology): “There have been recent advances in MR pulse sequences and image reconstruction, such as multiband imaging (Larkman et al., 2001; Moeller et al., 2010; Feinberg et al., 2010), MR encephalography (MREG; Hennig et al.”
Resting-state fMRI in the Human Connectome Project (2013, methodology): “Early HCP piloting utilised a combination of two accelerations — the multiband method described above, and “simultaneous image refocused” (SIR) (Feinberg et al., 2002), the combined technique being referred to as “multiplexed” EPI (Feinberg et al., 2010).”