Abstract
PurposeTo propose a method to reduce the slab boundary artifacts in three‐dimensional multislab diffusion MRI.MethodsBloch simulation is used to investigate the effects of multiple factors on slab boundary artifacts, including characterization of residual errors on diffusion quantification. A nonlinear inversion method is proposed to simultaneously estimate the slab profile and the underlying (corrected) image.ResultsCorrection results of numerical phantom and in vivo data demonstrate that the method can effectively remove slab boundary artifacts for diffusion data. Notably, the nonlinear inversion is also successful at short TR, a regimen where previously proposed methods (slab profile encoding and weighted average) retain residual artifacts in both diffusion‐weighted images and diffusion metrics (mean diffusion coefficient and fractional anisotropy).ConclusionThe nonlinear inversion for removing slab boundary artifacts provides improvements over existing methods, particularly at the short TRs required to maximize SNR efficiency. Magn Reson Med 76:1183–1195, 2016. © 2015 The Authors. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Highlights
Improvements in spatial resolution for diffusion MRI of the brain can provide the ability to resolve small structures, enabling investigation of finer neuroanatomical features and detailed white matter fiber architecture
We present a method to minimize the slab boundary artifacts for 3D multislab diffusion MRI (dMRI) with SNR-optimal TRs ($2 s)
We introduce a nonlinear inversion extension of PEN, which we call nonlinear inversion for slab profile encoding (NPEN), where the slab profile encoding is formulated as a nonlinear optimization
Summary
Improvements in spatial resolution for diffusion MRI (dMRI) of the brain can provide the ability to resolve small structures, enabling investigation of finer neuroanatomical features and detailed white matter fiber architecture. Two-dimensional (2D) acquisition can Acquisition of 3D phase navigators could be avoided by using approaches such as driven equilibrium diffusion preparation [10], acquisition with a small field of view (FOV) [11,12,13], cardiac gating [11,14,15], and estimation of 3D phase errors using data from multiple shots [16,17]. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
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