Concurrent Higher-Order Field Monitoring Eliminates Thermal Drifts in Parallel DWI

Bertram Jakob Wilm¹, Christoph Barmet¹, Carolin Reischauer¹, Klaas Paul Pruessmann¹

Concurrent higher-order field monitoring is introduced to diffusion weighted imaging, which was enabled by using ¹⁹F NMR for a 3rd order dynamic field camera. Concurrent field monitoring captures the full field dynamics during each diffusion weighted acquisition simultaneously with the imaging coils data. Integrating this field information into image reconstruction eliminates the effects of thermal drifts along with those induced by eddy currents and other gradient imperfections. To benefit from a shortened TE and reduced susceptibility artifacts, higher-order reconstruction was extended to encompass parallel imaging by incorporating coil sensitivities in the encoding matrix.