Diffusion-Weighted PROPELLER with a Novel Unaliasing Technique for Small Field of View Imaging

Zhiqiang Li¹, Donglai Huo², Xiaoli Zhao¹, Ajeetkumar Gaddipati¹, James Pipe²

Split-blade PROPELLER was introduced for diffusion-weighted (DW) imaging to avoid image distortion. When imaging a small field of view of a large object, No-Phase-Wrap (NPW) is usually applied to remove aliasing, with a trade off in blade width and scan time. In this work a new method based on parallel imaging techniques was proposed to effectively eliminate the aliasing for DW-PROPELLER. The feasibility is demonstrated in phantom and spine imaging with image quality comparable to conventional NPW but without the loss of scan time or blade width.