Reduced Field of View Diffusion Weighted Imaging of the Brain at 7T

Cornelius von Morze¹, Douglas A. Kelley², Suchandrima Banerjee², Timothy M. Shepherd¹, Duan Xu¹, Christopher P. Hess¹

Ventral regions of the brain are an important research target in the early detection of Alzheimers disease, but standard single shot EPI diffusion weighted imaging of these areas at 7T is contaminated by severe imaging artifacts. To reduce these, we investigated a combination of reduced FOV acquisition, enabled by outer volume suppression with custom designed quadratic phase RF pulses, with existing parallel imaging and partial Fourier methods. The reduced FOV diffusion acquisition greatly reduced the level of artifacts in five human subjects (including four patients with early symptoms of dementia).