Reduced field-of-view and multi-shot DWI acquisition techniques: prospective evaluation in prostate cancer imaging

Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) non-invasively evaluates tissue microstructure, relevant in the setting of prostate cancer. Distortion from susceptibility effects can confound standard single-shot echo planar imaging (ssEPI). Reduced-distortion techniques, including reduced field of view (rFOV) and multi-shot EPI (msEPI), may improve prostate imaging quality but further evaluation is warranted. Therefore, a prospective comparison of rFOV and msEPI to ssEPI, in either biopsy proven or suspected prostate cancer patients, was performed. Our results demonstrate that both rFOV and msEPI reduce distortion artifacts, and improve image quality, in comparison to ssEPI. Furthermore, ADC quantification was reproducible across these three techniques.