Correcting High Order Eddy Current Induced Distortion for Diffusion Weighted Echo Planar Imaging

Dan Xu¹, Joe K. Maier, Kevin F. King¹, Bruce D. Collick, Hong Huang, Tony M. Linz, Gaohong Wu

Eddy currents of high spatial order can generate slice and diffusion direction dependent distortions in diffusion weighted echo planar imaging (DW-EPI). In this paper, we propose two complementary methods to correct such distortions: The first method modifies gradient waveform amplitudes and receiver frequency on a slice-by-slice basis in the pulse sequence using predicted high order eddy current (HOEC) field, and the second method corrects the distorted images by image-domain post processing. Body diffusion results show that the proposed methods are capable of significantly reducing HOEC induced distortions for DW-EPI.