An integrated hardware for fMRI studies of the human brain

The authors have built a specialized hardware system for performing functional MRI studies of the human brain. The hardware consists of two subsystems. The first one is the data acquisition unit that uses a 1.5 T whole-body magnet in conjunction with gradient and RF (radio frequency) coils for rapid echo planar imaging (EPI). The second is the visual activation system which uses a 133 MHz Pentium computer interfaced with a computer controlled LCD projector to display visual activation tasks while the subject is inside the scanner and could respond by pressing a keypad which is an integral part of the whole subunit. Furthermore, a real time k-space mapping subunit was also built to correct for data sampling problems. Sample fMRI images obtained with the system using a checker board activation task are presented