Experimental Demonstration of Diffusion Signal Enhancement in 2D DESIRE Images

Ileana Ozana Jelescu¹, Nicolas Boulant¹, Denis Le Bihan¹, Luisa Ciobanu¹

As opposed to standard diffusion-weighted sequences, the DESIRE (Diffusion Enhancement of SIgnal and REsolution) method gains signal through diffusion. We implemented 2D DESIRE with 60 μm spatial resolution and evaluated enhancement in three media: water (D≈1.5x10^-3 mm²/s), thin and thick silicone oils (D≈1.8x10^-4 mm²/s and D≈9x10^-6 mm²/s, respectively), following a saturation time of 336 ms. Average enhancement in the DESIRE images was 3 in water, 1.9 in thin oil and zero in thick oil, confirming that the stronger the diffusion, the greater the enhancement. The application of the technique to imaging barriers and multi-compartment phantoms is in progress.