Multiband (aka simultaneous multislice) EPI validation in progress!

I am pleased to see a couple of presentations at next week's ISMRM conference in Salt Lake City dealing with some of the important validation steps that should be performed before multiband (MB) EPI (or simultaneous multislice (SMS) EPI if you prefer) is adopted for routine use by the neuroimaging community:

Characterization of Artifactual Correlation in Highly-Accelerated Simultaneous Multi-Slice (SMS) fMRI Acquisitions

Abstract #0410, ISMRM Annual Meeting, 2013.

Kawin Setsompop, Jonathan R. Polimeni, Himanshu Bhat, and Lawrence L. Wald

Simultaneous Multi-Slice (SMS) acquisition with blipped-CAIPI scheme has enabled dramatic reduction in imaging time for fMRI acquisitions, enabling high-resolution whole-brain acquisitions with short repetition times. The characterization of SMS acquisition performance is crucial to wide adoption of the technique. In this work, we examine an important source of artifact: spurious thermal noise correlation between aliased imaging voxels. This artifactual correlation can create undesirable bias in fMRI resting-state functional connectivity analysis. Here we provide a simple method for characterizing this artifactual correlation, which should aid in guiding the selection of appropriate slice- and inplane-acceleration factors for SMS acquisitions during protocol design.

(I also found this link to the full abstract.)

An Assessment of Motion Artefacts in Multi Band EPI for High Spatial and Temporal Resolution Resting State fMRI

Abstract #3275, ISMRM Annual Meeting, 2013.

Michael E. Kelly, Eugene P. Duff, Janine D. Bijsterbosch, Natalie L. Voets, Nicola Filippini, Steen Moeller, Junqian Xu, Essa S. Yacoub, Edward J. Auerbach, Kamil Ugurbil, Stephen M. Smith, and Karla L. Miller

Multiband (MB) EPI is a recent MRI technique that offers increased temporal and/or spatial resolution as well as increased temporal SNR due to increased temporal degrees-of-freedom (DoF). However, MB-EPI may exhibit increased motion sensitivity due to the combination of short TR with parallel imaging. In this study, the performance of MB-EPI with different acceleration factors was compared to that of standard EPI, with respect to subject motion. Although MB-EPI with 4 and 8 times acceleration exhibited some motion sensitivity, retrospective clean-up of the data using independent component analysis was successful at removing artefacts. By increasing temporal DoF, accelerated MB-EPI supports higher spatial resolution, with no loss in statistical significance compared to standard EPI. MB-EPI is therefore an important new technique capable of providing high resolution, temporally rich FMRI datasets for more interpretable mapping of the brain's functional networks.

The natural question to ask next occurs at the interface of these two topics: what about head motion-driven artifactual correlations between simultaneously excited slices? I am also curious to see how retrospective motion correction, e.g. affine registration algorithms, performs with MB-EPI that contains appreciable motion contamination. Is the "pre-processing" pipeline that we use for single-shot EPI appropriate for MB-EPI?

In-plane parallel imaging such as GRAPPA and SENSE were adopted for EPI-based fMRI experiments prematurely in my view, i.e. before full validations had been conducted. (Mea culpa. I was one of those beguiled by GRAPPA when I first saw it.) The failure modes - like motion sensitivity - hadn't been fully explored before a lot of us began employing the methods for their purported benefits. It would be nice if the failure modes of MB-EPI get a thorough workout before the neuroimaging community adopts it en masse. 

That said, I am still very excited that MB-EPI may offer the most significant performance boost for fMRI acquisition for more than a decade (since the introduction of scanners capable of EPI readout on all three gradient axes). But I continue to seek validation before recommending widespread adoption of MB-EPI (or any other method) and I look forward to seeing more reports such as these in the literature and online, prior to people using them in experiments to solve the brain.