The effect of off‐resonance radio frequency pulse saturation on fMRI contrast

This paper describes the use of off‐resonance saturation to further manipulate the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast of fMRI. A customized narrow bandwidth radiofrequency pulse, applied with a range of frequency offsets prior to selection of each slice, was designed and incorporated into a gradient echo EPI sequence. This application takes advantage of the resonance frequency and linewidth differences between the oxygenated and deoxygenated state of blood in human brain during task activation and rest, and is capable of creating an enhancement in the contrast of the BOLD effect. Because of a possible contribution to the signal change from cerebro‐spinal fluid, which has a much narrower linewidth and smaller frequency shift compared with the brain tissue, data were also collected using a nulling inversion pulse. The inversion pulse was applied before the off‐resonance pulse and data acquisition to eliminate the CSF signal. Functional areas are thus more localized to the brain tissue. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.