Novena Rangwala1,2, Girish Srinivasan1,2, Xiaohong Joe Zhou1,3
1Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA; 2Dept. of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; 3Depts. of Radiology, Neurosurgery and Bioengineering, University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA
Diffusion imaging is typically performed in axial planes because of the pronounced image distortion in sagittal and coronal planes using echo planar imaging and increased aliasing artifacts with PROPELLER. We have developed a simple slice-tilting technique which reduces the aliasing artifacts in a diffusion-weighted PROPELLER sequence by exciting a slightly different slice than the one selected by the refocusing RF pulses. This technique has resulted in ~60% reduction of streaking artifacts in sagittal and coronal diffusion-weighted images of the human brain, suggesting the possibility of obtaining high quality diffusion images in any arbitrary plane orientation.
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