Practical challenges of continuous real‐time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback with multiband accelerated echo‐planar imaging and short repetition times

Abstract

Continuous real‐time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neurofeedback is gaining increasing scientific attention in clinical neuroscience and may benefit from the short repetition times of modern multiband echoplanar imaging sequences. However, minimizing feedback delay can result in technical challenges. Here, we report a technical problem we experienced during continuous fMRI neurofeedback with multiband echoplanar imaging and short repetition times. We identify the possible origins of this problem, describe our current interim solution and provide openly available workflows and code to other researchers in case they wish to use a similar approach.

Interhemispheric connectivity during spontaneous switches in visual perceptual coherence as revealed by fMRI at multiple temporal resolutions

“…From the technical point of view, fMRI neurofeedback has high computational requirements, namely regarding image reconstruction at the scanner, network capacity and speed for image transfer at every volume, and the real-time image processing software itself. Some of these requirements have been addressed in (Renz et al, 2023), where the authors managed to achieve a stable real-time acquisition with a TR of 1 second, but not less, a result which may be highly dependent on each site's MRI setup and infrastructure.…”

“…Given the increasing application of MB sequences for fMRI protocols, a number of studies started to thoroughly evaluate how the BOLD signal was affected by this new acquisition technique (Chen et Renz et al, 2023). These studies compare quality and functional metrics for data acquired with different temporal resolutions (hence multiband factors).…”