Neuro CTI now has two Siemens Prisma scanners. The Prisma scanner has twice the gradient strength of the old TIM Trio system (80mT/m) with modern-day electronics. Both scanners are equipped with their own 20 channel head coil and 64 channel head coil. There is also a 32 channel head coil shared between the scanners.
The 64 channel is similar to the 32 channel head coil on the Trio in size, and is the recommended coil for all multiband scans, as the higher number of coil elements allows better separation of the simultaneously excited slices. To assist investigators in planning their protocols on the new system, we offer 3 levels of protocols depending on how far investigators would like to push the limits of this new technology:
Trio-like: same settings as TRIO will get SNR gain from electronics.
Advanced: Slice acceleration of 2, TR=2s, 56 slices with TE=25ms and 2mm isotropic for BOLD, higher DTI quality due to shorter echo time. Structural scans use a navigator to reduce motion sensitivity by 1mm isotropic but have a ringing artifact when you run the 5-minute scan.
High end: Slice acceleration of 2 and ipat2 for Bold Task with 1.7mm isotropic; for resting-state slice acceleration of 8 for 2mm isotropic resolution with a TR of 555ms! DTI is slice accelerated by 4 and is a 2 shell (b=1000 and 2000) for 64 directions with other setups available. Structural scans use a navigator to reduce motion sensitivity with 0.8mm isotropic resolution but have a ringing artifact when you run the 5-minute scan.
Please contact neuroimaging@northwestern.edu for further details and to set up your protocol.
