Josef Habib1,2, Richard Bowtell2, Dorothee P. Auer1, Paul S. Morgan1,3
1Academic Radiology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, UK; 2Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, UK; 3Radiology & Radiological Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA
This work aims to address a number of outstanding issues to determine whether or not cardiac gating should be used as a standard practice in DTI at 3T and 7T. To this end, repeated DTI-scans of a heavily affected region were acquired, and datasets of larger populations simulated via Bootstrapping. In the FA-values of 3T-scans cardiac pulsation was found to result in potentially significant artefacts in certain individuals. On a group level, however, the observed errors were small compared to scanner instabilities. At 7T, the even lower scan-rescan stability completely masked cardiac pulsation effects in all observed volunteers.