20 channel phased array head neck coil

A 10-minute resting state functional MRI (fMRI) scan was acquired using a 1.5T Magnetom Aera MRI scanner (Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) equipped with a 20-channel phased array head-neck coil, at the Civil Hospital of Brescia, Italy. We used a 2D echo planar imaging (EPI) sequence (TR = 2500 ms, TE = 50 ms, 240 volumes, 29 slices, 3.5 mm thickness, 1.1 mm inter-slice gap, matrix size = 64 x 64) sensitive to blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) contrast. During this acquisition, lights were turned off and subjects were instructed to keep their eyes closed, not to think of anything in particular, and to not fall asleep. For registration purposes, we acquired a 3D magnetization-prepared rapid gradient echo (MPRAGE) T1-weighted scan (TR = 2040 ms, TE = 3.08 ms, Field of View = 256 mm, matrix size = 320 x 320, 144 slices, voxel size = 1 mm³).

All subjects were scanned on the same 3.0-T Siemens Skyra scanner (Germany) using a 20-channel phased array head-neck coil. Whole-brain T1-weighted three-dimensional magnetization-prepared rapid gradient echo (MPRAGE) scans (repetition time = 5000 ms, echo time = 2.98 ms, inversion time = 700 and 2500 ms, flip angle = 4°, field of view = 256 × 240 mm, matrix = 256 × 240, voxel size = 1.0 × 1.0 × 1.0 mm) were acquired. The DTI images were obtained using whole-brain 30-direction spin-echo echo planar imaging (EPI) sequence (field of view = 220 × 220 mm, matrix = 110 × 110, voxel size = 2.0 × 2.0 × 2.0 mm, 60 contiguous axial slices, repetition time = 8100 ms, echo time = 90 ms). The acquisition was performed axially with an anterior-to-posterior phase-encoding direction. Twelve reference volume (b = 0 s/mm²) and 90 diffusion volumes (b = 1000 s/mm²) with uniformly distributed diffusion directions were acquired. RsfMRI scans were collected using a gradient EPI sequence (repetition time = 2500 ms, echo time = 30 ms, flip angle = 90°, field of view = 210 × 210 mm, matrix = 70 × 70, 43 axial slices, slice thickness = 3 mm, voxel size = 3.0 × 3.0 × 3.0 mm). Participants were required to keep their eyes closed during the resting-state scanning. Imaging data were stored in DICOM format (.dcm) and converted to nifty format (.nii) using dcm2nii software for processing.