title: Spiral K-space MR imaging of cortical activation.
abstract: Brain function can be mapped with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging sensitized to regional changes in blood oxygenation due to cortical activation. Several MR imaging methods, including conventional imaging and echo-planar imaging, have been successfully used for this purpose. The authors investigated spiral k-space MR imaging, implemented with an unmodified 1.5-T clinical imager, for imaging of cortical activation. A gradient-echo, spiral k-space imaging method was used to measure activation in the primary visual cortex (number sequence task), primary motor cortex (fist-clenching task), and prefrontal cortex (verbal fluency task). Comparison of conventional and spiral k-space imaging in the visual and motor cortex, in which signal-to-noise ratio, voxel size, and imaging time were matched, showed that artifacts were reduced with the spiral k-space method, while the area and degree of activation were similar. The number of sections that could be imaged in a fixed time interval was increased by a factor of four with this implementation of spiral k-space imaging compared with conventional imaging.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, PA 15213, USA.
authors.forename: D C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Noll
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.forename: C H
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Schneider
mesh_terms: D001931:Brain Mapping; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*