Allegra head only mr scanner

When post-surgical structural brain scans (T1 MP-RAGE) were not available from the referring center, the Department of Radiology at the NYU School of Medicine, patients were imaged at the NYU Center for Brain Imaging on a 3-Tesla Siemens Allegra head-only MR scanner. Medical Center scans were obtained using 1.5 or 3-Tesla Siemens full-body MR scanners. Image acquisitions included a conventional three-plane localizer and two T1-weighted gradient-echo sequence (MP-RAGE) volumes (TE = 3.25 ms, TR = 2530 ms, TI = 1.100 ms, flip angle=7° FOV=256 mm, voxel size=1×1×1.33 mm). Acquisition parameters were optimized for increased gray/white matter image contrast.

All images were acquired with a 3T Allegra head-only MR scanner (Siemens Medical systems, Erlangen, Germany), using a circular polarization head coil. Resting state fMRI (rsfMRI) was acquired using a T2*-weighted echo planar imaging sequence with repetition time (TR) = 2 s, echo time (TE) = 32 ms and voxel size of 4×4×4 mm³. In total, 150 volumes of 33 axial slices were acquired in a 5 minute scan. In order to provide anatomical reference, structural images were acquired using a 3D MP-RAGE sequence (TR = 1820 ms, TE = 4.38 ms, inversion time = 1100 ms), with a voxel size of 1×1×1 mm³.