Fig 1.
Illustration of the succession of tasks occurring during the localizer with an example of signal recorded in a ROI of the temporal lobe of one volunteer.
Fig 2.
Results of the simulations obtained with universal pulses over the 20 subjects of the pulse design database for the SMS-EPI (left panel) and 3D-EPI (right panel) sequences, in the mid-sagittal plane.
Fig 3.
Example of in-vivo anatomical and EPI raw images.
Example of images acquired on two subjects in the sagittal, axial and coronal planes. The first row represents the anatomical scan (MPRAGE), while the second and the third rows represent the functional scans acquired with the SMS-EPI and 3D-EPI sequences, respectively. The functional images displayed were realigned and corrected for distortion.
Fig 4.
Raw tSNR (upper row) and t-score testing with FAST for the mean signal (lower row) measured on average over the population for the SMS-EPI and 3D-EPI sequences.
Fig 5.
t-score maps averaged over the 10 volunteers for (a) the right>left click contrast, (b) the left>right click contrast, (c) the audio>video contrast, (d) the video>audio contrast, (e) the computation>sentences contrast and (f) the sentences>checkerboard contrast. The sensorimotor contrasts (a to d) were thresholded at p<0.001, uncorrected, while the higher level contrasts (e and f) were thresholded at p<0.01, uncorrected.
Fig 6.
ROC curves obtained for the SMS-EPI (blue dashed line) and 3D-EPI sequences (red solid line) for the GLM analysis performed with AR(1) (a) and FAST (b) noise whitening models. These curves were obtained by averaging the mean sensitivity and specificity measured for the four robust sensorimotor contrasts over the subjects for significance thresholds ranging from 0 to 0.5.
Fig 7.
Bar-plots representing the specificity, sensitivity and d’ values for the SMS-EPI and 3D-EPI sequences, and computed with AR(1) and FAST noise whitening models. These values were measured by averaging the mean values obtained for the four sensorimotor constrasts over the subjects for a significance threshold p<0.001, uncorrected.