End-to-end polar analysis software package for radially acquired fMRI

Motivation: Achieving full advantage of radial acquisition and reconstruction by conducting the complete analysis in the polar coordinate system. Goal(s): Implement a comprehensive end-to-end fMRI analysis software package with a graphical user interface. Approach: Radially acquired fMRI was reconstructed natively in the polar coordinate system using the Polar Fourier Transform, followed by utilizing preprocessing steps (motion correction and brain extraction) implemented in the polar coordinate system to perform statistical analysis. Results: The software package performs reconstruction, preprocessing, and statistical analyses of radially acquired fMRI data in the polar coordinate system and is validated using fMRI of 31 healthy subjects. Impact: This software package facilitates the native polar analysis of radially acquired fMRI that increases the specificity and/or improves the spatial resolution, particularly in task-based brain mapping studies with the region of interest considerably smaller than the field of view