Sequences

Introductory note

The default MRI sequences shown on this page are meant to be used as guidelines, but they can be modified in order to meet the needs of your study. If you would like some advice on setting up your sequence, please contact MR Physics (###).

If you want to double check what parameters were used for images already acquired, you can also look at the information from the DICOM headers, which SPM saves when converting to Nifti format. After DICOM conversion every folder has a dicom_headers.mat file. In Matlab you can check the parameters for the images you've acquired:

>> load dicom_headers.mat

>> DICOMHEADERS{1}

BCAN_fMRI

For accurate slice time correction consider this document. See also here and here.

The Siemens system includes additional "dummy scans" at the beginning of the acquisition to allow the magnetization to stabilize to a steady state. The dummy scans are not stored, so they will make the banging sound like normal scans but there will be no data associated with them. There will be a trigger pulse that occurs with the first REAL SCAN (i.e. after the last dummy scan). The number of dummy scans is chosen to guarantee more than 3 seconds of time for stabilization: Dummy scans = ROUNDUP(3001/TR), e.g.

• If the number of "measurements" is 1 then there are NO DUMMY SCANS

• TR > = 3001ms: 1 dummy scan

• 3001 < TR <= 1501ms: 2 dummy scans

• 1501 < TR <= 1001ms: 3 dummy scans

BCAN_Fieldmap

BCAN_DTI