Tom Yankeelov1, J. Christopher Gatenby1, E. Brian Welch2, Bapsi Chakravarthy, Darla Freehardt, Ingrid Mayer, Mark Kelley, Ingrid Meszoely, John Gore1
1Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA; 2MR Clinical Science, Philips Healthcare, Cleveland, OH, USA
Diffusion weighted MRI (DW-MRI) is a promising surrogate biomarker for the characterization of human breast cancer. Unfortunately, the quality of DW-MRI data is frequently compromised by the presence of main magnetic field (B0) inhomogeneities which can lead to geometric distortion in the echo planar imaging (EPI) techniques typically used to acquire such data. We present preliminary evidence suggesting that correcting DW-MRI data of the breast via a B0 map can lead to superior quality data in terms of less distortion and better tumor localization.