Temporal SNR optimization through RF coil combination in fMRI: The more, the better?

Redouane Jamil, Franck Mauconduit, Caroline Le Ster, Philipp Ehses, Benedikt A. Poser, Alexandre Vignaud, Nicolas Boulant*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

For functional MRI with a multi-channel receiver RF coil, images are often reconstructed channel by channel, resulting into multiple images per time frame. The final image to analyze usually is the result of the covariance Sum-of-Squares (covSoS) combination across these channels. Although this reconstruction is quasi-optimal in SNR, it is not necessarily the case in terms of temporal SNR (tSNR) of the time series, which is yet a more relevant metric for fMRI data quality. In this work, we investigated tSNR optimality through voxel-wise RF coil combination and its effects on BOLD sensitivity. An analytical solution for an optimal RF coil combination is described, which is somewhat tied to the extended Krueger-Glover model involving both thermal and physiological noise covariance matrices. Compared experimentally to covSOS on four volunteers at 7T, the method yielded great improvement of tSNR but, surprisingly, did not result into higher BOLD sensitivity. Solutions to improve the method such as for example the t-score for the mean recently proposed are also explored, but result into similar observations once the statistics are corrected properly. Overall, the work shows that data-driven RF coil combinations based on tSNR considerations alone should be avoided unless additional and unbiased assumptions can be made.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0259592
Number of pages15
JournalPLOS ONE
Volume16
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Nov 2021

Keywords

  • PHYSIOLOGICAL NOISE
  • TO-NOISE RATIO

Cite this