Dr. Kamil Uludag | Foundations of functional MRI & Human brain imaging at 7 Tesla

Ultra high-field MRI has, in the last years, rapidly grown from a niche technology primarily used by MRI physicist and engineers, to a widely used imaging approach to study brain structure and cognitive function. In the first part of my talk, I will describe experiments and theoretical models to investigate the hemodynamic response underlying the fMRI signal and to derive brain functional connectivity. In the second part of my talk, I will focus on MRI method developments for anatomical and functional MRI at 7T, in particular on: a) MRI sequences for high-resolution functional MRI; b) accelerated imaging for whole brain functional & anatomical MRI; c) arterial spin labeling measuring cerebral blood flow, not yet standard at 7 Tesla; and d) quantitative anatomical imaging (T1 and T2*), allowing for accurate longitudinal studies and inter-subject comparison beyond the limits of standard qualitative approaches.

Poster