The importance of physiological noise regression in high temporal resolution fMRI

Abstract

Recently a new technique called multiband imaging was introduced, it allows extremely low repetition times for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). As these ultra fast imaging scans can increase the Nyquist rate by an order of magnitude, there are many new effects, that have to be accounted for. As more frequencies can now be sampled directly, we want to analyze especially those that are due to physiological noise, such as cardiac and respiratory signals. Here, we adapted RETROICOR [4] to handle multiband fMRI data. We show the importance of physiological noise regression for standard temporal resolution fMRI and compare it to the high temporal resolution case. Our results show that especially for multiband fMRI scans, it is of the utmost importance to apply physiological noise regression, as residuals of these noises are clearly detectable in non noise independent components if no prior physiological noise has been applied. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.