Do Commonly Used B-Values Yield Accurate Apparent Kurtosis Values?

Tristan Anselm Kuder¹, Bram Stieltjes², Wolfhard Semmler¹, Frederik Bernd Laun¹

Diffusional kurtosis is usually measured by fitting to the expansion of the logarithmic signal in b terminated after the quadratic summand. Since it is not clear, if neglecting higher order terms is justified for b-values typically applied in clinical applications, in this work, the influence of higher order terms was investigated for different model geometries using computer simulations and in phantom experiments. For b-values typically used in vivo, the measured kurtosis strongly deviates from the correct value showing an important influence of the higher order summands.