Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

Exploring the human brain using magnetic resonance imaging and parallel transmission at ultra-high field

Objective

Full exploitation of ultra high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) requires innovative methods to control the homogeneity and the safety of the high frequency radiofrequency (RF) waves used to acquire images. This can be achieved by using parallel transmission of the RF waves to boost the number of degrees of freedom, but its complexity has thus far deterred its wide use. The aim of EXPAT is to apply sophisticated quantum information processing (QIP) techniques to manipulate the nuclear spins efficiently with parallel transmission at ultra high field MRI on the state-of-the art 7 Tesla and the unique 11.7 Tesla MRI scanner that will be installed at NeuroSpin/CEA. By bringing a practical solution to parallel transmission at such high field strength, EXPAT will be a major breakthrough for MRI of the brain.
Radiofrequency pulse design departing from traditional MRI concepts thus will be a central aspect of this project. Mathematical concepts will be applied to describe efficiently sub-classes of RF waveforms leading to non-trivial and useful dynamics, thereby providing a minimum number of parameters to be used as ingenious “control knobs” to design parallel transmission pulses and explore regimes of spin excitation hardly accessible by current formalisms. Another novel aspect will be to revisit entirely the way RF safety is handled by taking directly into account the temperature in the human head during scanning and at pulse design stage, rather than the indirect specific absorption rate currently used in MRI. Tracking temperature will relax the constraints in RF pulse design as well as in data acquisition strategies by at least a factor of two, while strictly enforcing safety. Subject-based radiofrequency field characterization, model validations, MRI sequence developments, numerical studies and careful monitoring of the experiments will be conducted to optimize the implementation of the new methods.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

ERC-2012-StG_20111109
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-SG - ERC Starting Grant

Host institution

COMMISSARIAT A L ENERGIE ATOMIQUE ET AUX ENERGIES ALTERNATIVES
EU contribution
€ 1 499 292,00
Address
RUE LEBLANC 25
75015 PARIS 15
France

See on map

Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0