Abstract #3473

Graham S, Chavez s

Cardiac-induced pulsatile motion can reduce signal intensity in diffusion weighted images. However, it has not been widely reported to affect results when typical diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) protocols are employed. As a result, contradictory advice is being advocated in the literature and in practice, there is no accepted standard in terms of implementing cardiac gating for DTI. A simple mathematical formulation of the effect of signal averaging and confirming experiments resolve the apparent discrepancy and provide an explanation and assessment of the sensitivity of typical DTI protocols to cardiac-induced motion.