Fig. 1.

Positioning of the field of view (small central solid green/yellow) covering cervical segments C2 and C4 (sagittal view). Reduced field of view was achieved by minimizing the phase-encoding steps in the anterior-posterior direction and avoiding consequential fold-over by two spatial saturation pulses (shaded regions). The slice positions of the grey and white matter region of interest (ROI) in the upper part of C2 (C2 ROI, cyan and orange horizontal lines) and in the lower part of C4 (C4 ROI, two cyan horizontal lines) are depicted. The grey and white matter ROIs at the position of the orange line are shown in Fig. 2.