A fast diffusion weighted MR imaging technique using radial sampling

Abstract

Diffusion weighted MRI obtains the contrast to use the spin`s Brownian motion. There is a need for an imaging sequence that can reduce the imaging time and provide a high resolution diffusion weighted image. By using a projection reconstruction imaging sequence, it is possible to obtain a high resolution diffusion weighted image. However, very long acquisition time is an inevitable problem of this sequence. So by em-ploying a sequence based on radial trajectories which projection views have different directional information of diffusion each other, a diffusion weighted can be produced quickly. The ordering about directions of diffu-sion gradients is proposed to reduce the artifacts for diffusion anisotropy in this paper. The computer simula-tions were performed to evaluate the proposed method. Experimental results from the phantom and brain stud-ies suggest that the new technique is more accurate as well as more fast. The proposed method can be used to obtain a high resolution diffusion weighted image in human brain and apply in air-tissue interface, where EPI cannot be employed, such as cholesteatoma.