High-Resolution, Fat-Suppressed, Diffusion-Weighted MRI of the Breast Using a Self-Navigated Multi-Shot Technique

Wouter B. Veldhuis¹, Chunlei Liu¹, Roland Bammer¹, Bruce L. Daniel¹, Michael E. Moseley¹

With increasing resolution the readout time for conventional single-shot diffusion-weighted echo-planar imaging (DW-EPI) lengthens to the point that blurring and geometric distortions impair image acquisition. Here we compare high-resolution 256x256 multi-shot breast-DW MRI using SNAILS, to DW-EPI with parallel imaging. Free-breathing, axial, bilateral DW-data sets were acquired in 6 healthy volunteers at 1.5T. SNAILS allowed distortion free acquisition of 256² data sets, not possible with DW-EPI, even with parallel imaging. Comparison of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values at 128² resolution, showed that ADCs obtained with DW-EPI are lower than those obtained with SNAILS, with identical b-value combinations.