Multi-slab whole-brain in vivo 0.35 mm human brain at 7 T with low undersampling to validate future acceleration & denoising

Motivation: Our previous work provided 0.35×0.35×0.35 mm3 voxel resolution T2* dataset where the intracortical angioarchitecture details were captured and analyzed (Gulban et al. 2022). However, this work only covered a third of the brain while requiring two scanning sessions. Goal(s): Our aim here is to explore reducing the scanning time while expanding the brain coverage to get similar quality data for vascular analyses. Approach: Our approach consisted of exploring further acceleration for T2* imaging and boosting the SNR of T1 images though denoising instead of multi-run averaging. Results: Our results suggest that we can reduce the scanning time five-fold while accomplishing whole brain overage. Impact: We provide a low undersampling 0.35 mm in vivo human brain dataset and a scanning protocol (including 7 T T2*, T1 contrasts) for cortical angioarchitecture studies while delivering a reference dataset to test further acceleration and denoising.