Usefulness and limitation of functional MRI with echo planar imaging using clinical MR apparatus

We studied blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI) with EPI sequence in 21 normal volunteers and 8 presurgical clinical patients using a 1.5 T clinical MRI apparatus. To optimize the imaging parameters, we compared the fMRI images obtained by GFE-EPI and by SE-EPI in normal volunteers while each squeezed a sponge ball. We identified the motor cortex in 85.7% of normal volunteers by GFE-EPI in contrast to only 28.6% by SE-EPI. In addition, our clinical MR apparatus, using optimized parameters, maximally provides 15 slices per 5 seconds. In patients with brain tumor close to the sensorimotor cortex, we attempted to identify the motor cortex preoperatively by this procedure and found a significant increase of signal intensity in the motor cortex in 5 of 8 patients. In conclusion, fMRI using EPI may be useful for identifying the motor cortex preoperatively. However, further development of the apparatus is needed to obtain better temporal and spatial resolution for clinical applications. (author)