Fig. 4

Violin plots illustrating the distribution of the six Image Quality Metrics (IQMs) across different acquisition protocols. Metrics include (a) Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR); (b) Entropy Focus Criterion (EFC); (c) Contrast-to-Noise Ratio (CNR); (d) Standardized DVARS (DVARS_std). (e) Total Signal-to-Noise Ratio (tSNR); and (f) Mean Framewise Displacement (FD-mean). Data collected at 3 T is shown in orange, while 7 T data is shown in purple. Asterisks (****) indicate that the p-value of the group difference is less than 0.001, while ‘ns’ denotes non-significant differences. For panels (a–c), statistically significant differences between 3 T and 7 T data are observed, except for T2-weighted images. The FD-mean metric shows no significant group difference between 3T and 7T resting-state functional MRI acquisitions.