Double-Wave-Vector Diffusion-Weighting Experiments with Multiple Concatenations

¹Dept. of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany; ²Neuroimage Nord, Hamburg-Kiel-Lbeck, Germany

An extension of the double wave vector diffusion-weighting experiment with short mixing time that involves multiple concatenations of the two diffusion-weighting periods in a single experiment is proposed. A generalized tensor model is presented to describe the signal behaviour for arbitrary orientation distributions and number of concatenations. The absolute and relative signal modulation increases with the number of concatenations approaching twice the value observed for the un-concatenated experiment. Thus, multiple concatenations may help to improve the detectability of the signal modulation on whole-body MR systems. These results are confirmed by numerical simulations using a Monte-Carlo algorithm.