Multimodal MRI Acquisition Protocol

The structural and diffusion images were acquired on Philips Intera 3T scanner using Magnetization Prepared Rapid Acquisition Gradient Echo (MPRAGE) sequence for T1-weighted structural MRI scans and single-shot echo-planar imaging (EPI) for DTI scans respectively. The T1-weighted MRI scans were acquired using the given parameters: repetitive time (TR) = 9.6 ms, echo time (TE) = 4.6 ms, flip angle = 8°, acquisition matrix = 208 x 208, reconstruction diameter = 240 cm, echo train length = 208 ms, and number of phase encoding steps = 208. The diffusion images were acquired in 15 diffusion weighted volumes with gradient encoding applied in 15 non-collinear directions (b = 1000 s/mm2) including one non-diffusion weighted reference image (nodif, b₀ = 0 s/mm²). The DTI acquisition parameters are as follows: TR = 11894.4 ms, TE = 51 ms, flip angle = 90°, reconstruction diameter = 224 cm, imaging matrix = 128 x 128, field of view = 224 x 224, number of PE steps is 110, slice thickness for the image acquisition = 2 mm, acquisition matrix = 112 x 110, pixel resolution = 1.75 x 1.75 mm^{2 (link)}, sense factor is set at value of 2 and the number of averages is equal to 2. MR Image acquisition parameters as given by IXI site http://brain-development.org/scanner-philips-medical-systems-intera-3t/