Abstract #0551

Disentangling diffusion-weighted SSFP: ADC estimates in terms of an effective diffusion time

Benjamin C Tendler¹, Saad Jbabdi¹, Sean Foxley², Menuka Pallebage-Gamarallage³, Moises Hernandez-Fernandes⁴, Martin R Turner³, Olaf Ansorge³, and Karla Miller¹

¹Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, ²Department of Radiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States, ³Clinical Neurology, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, ⁴Biomedical Image Computing and Analytics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Diffusion-weighted SSFP (dwSSFP) is a high-SNR-efficiency diffusion imaging method. Unlike conventional diffusion measurements, the dwSSFP signal reflects a range of diffusion times because the signal is recycled over multiple excitations. This complicates interpretation and leads to an ill-defined b-value. We present a framework to describe dwSSFP-derived ADC estimates in terms of an effective diffusion time. To achieve this, we require dwSSFP measurements at two flip-angles. Experimental results are presented in a whole, postmortem brain at 7T. This enables us to simultaneously addresses flip-angle inhomogeneity at 7T and provide ADC estimates that are more comparable to conventional diffusion MRI.

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