Abstract #1630

McNab J, Miller K

DW-SSFP signal attenuation is characterized in the context of 2D anisotropic diffusion. The DW-SSFP attenuated signal profile is shaped differently than that of DW-SE, with less narrowing at the principle diffusion axis. This difference in shape is explained by looking at the weighted summation of single echo attenuation profiles. The anisotropy contrast is contributed by the long STE components and thus it may be of interest to find ways to isolate these longer STEs. Diffusion tensor analysis from DW-SSFP should be possible, however, a new formalism will be required to extract information about the diffusion tensor from DW-SSFP data.