Fig. 4.

(A) T₁ histograms comparing MS-IR-EPI data acquired with a repetition time (TR) of 5 s (blue solid line, 96 slices acquired) and 3 s (solid red line, 64 slices acquired) with simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) =1. The dash lines show corresponding T₁ histograms acquired with SMS=2 to acquire 192 slices with TR=5 s (dash blue line) and SMS=3 to acquire 195 slices with TR=3.2 s (dash red line). All histograms correspond to the central imaging volume comprising 64 slices. T₁ maps for every other 4 slices in this volume (acquired with TR=5 s, SMS=1) are shown at the bottom. (B) T₁ histograms from MS-IR-EPI (TR=3.2 s, 5TIs, SMS=1) datasets acquired with a different number of slices (red: 65 slices; yellow: 35 slices; green: 15 slices and blue: 5 slices) compared to a single slice IR-EPI acquisition with matched scan parameters (TIs=[320 900 1470 2050 2625]ms). All histograms from MS-IR-EPI data correspond to the central slice, matching the single slice IR-EPI shown in the figure. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)