Proton Density-Weighted Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging at 0.35 Tesla

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of healthy human volunteers was carried out at 0.35T MRI system, using proton-density weighted turbo spin-echo imaging. It aims at verifying the proton-density change contribution to spin-echo functional magnetic resonance imaging. And try to get better effect of fMRI studies at 0.35T MRI system. Results demonstrated that signal intensity changes in motor area of the brain during performance of the hand motor task can be detected by proton density-weighted functional imaging using the theory of signal enhancement by extravascular water protons (SEEP) as contrast mechanism. And improving SNR and imaging speed is very meaningful for fMRI study at low magnetic field strength.