Toward the clinical application of functional magnetic resonance imaging

Functional MRI (fMRI) has great potential for clinical application. Although fMRI is widely applied to basic neuroscience study, it is not yet utilized in current clinical practice. However recent technological innovations in the MRI field, such as very high field strength (>3T), array coil and parallel imaging, and simultaneous measurement with other modalities could provide tremendous improvement in sensitivity and quantitative information toward the single subject study for diagnostic purposes. In this report, the fundamentals of fMRI are described from the physiological and physical point of view, and prospects for the future clinical use of fMRL are reviewed. (author)