Real-Time Observation of Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Arterial Pulsatility with MR-Encephalography

Introduction: The concept of one-voxel-one-coil(OVOC) acquisition has been introduced as an extreme realization of parallel imaging where spatial information is predominantly encoded through the sensitive volumes of multiple small coils. In implementations as MR-encephalography(MREG) or Inverse Imaging (InI) this allows very rapid examination of functional activation (1,2). The signal time course of MREG-acquisitions shows strong pulsatility due to breathing and ECG. For fMRI studies these are treated as confounds and removed by suitable physiological noise correction algorithms (3). The purpose of this study was to explore the feasibility of MREG/acquisition to measure the spatiotemporal dynamics of ECG-pulsatility.