A characterization of cardiac-induced noise in R * maps of the brain.

Purpose: Cardiac pulsation increases the noise level in brain maps of the transverse relaxation rate R *. Cardiac-induced noise is challenging to mitigate during the acquisition of R * mapping data because its characteristics are unknown. In this work, we aim to characterize cardiac-induced noise in brain maps of the MRI parameter R *.

Statistical analyses of motion-corrupted MRI relaxometry data computed from multiple scans.

Background: Consistent noise variance across data points (i.e. homoscedasticity) is required to ensure the validity of statistical analyses of MRI data conducted using linear regression methods.