Luisa Raimondo, Nikos Priovoulos, Catarina Passarinho, Jurjen Heij, Tomas Knapen, Serge O. Dumoulin, Jeroen C.W. Siero, Wietske van der Zwaag
Abstract BACKGROUND Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), typically using blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrast weighted imaging, allows study of brain function with millimeter spatial resolution and temporal resolution of one to a few seconds. At a mesoscopic scale, neurons are organized in structures of hundreds of micrometers and communicate at millisecond timescales, motivating methods with simultaneous high spatial and temporal resolution. Line-scanning promises this at the cost of volume coverage. NEW METHOD We provide a comprehensive update to human line-scanning fMRI, including multi-echo protocols, NORDIC denoising, and image-based navigators for motion correction, and we evaluate analysis strategies for the resulting time courses. RESULTS Multi-echo readout and NORDIC denoising significantly improved tSNR and t-statistics, while motion correction improved robustness. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS The combination of multi-echo acquisition and denoising in 1D line-scanning is novel and outperforms previous single-echo implementations. CONCLUSIONS The improved acquisition increases sensitivity and reliability, supporting future neuroscientific and clinical applications.