Abstract #0694

Improved Q-Ball Imaging Using a 300 MT/m Human Gradient

Julien Cohen-Adad¹, M Dylan Tisdall¹, Ralph Kimmlingen², Eva Eberlein², Thomas Witzel¹, Philipp Hoecht², Boris Keil¹, Juergen Nistler², Dietmar Lehne², Keith Heberlein³, Jennifer A. McNab¹, Herbert Thein², Franz Schmitt², Bruce R. Rosen¹, Van J. Wedeen¹, Lawrence L. Wald¹,⁴

¹A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States; ²Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany; ³Siemens Healthcare, Boston, United States; ⁴Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States

In this work we used a novel Connectom Gradient (AS302) system specifically designed to achieve ultra-high gradient strength (Gmax = 300 mT/m , about 7.5 fold stronger than clinical scanners). This enables to shorten the diffusion-encoding time and thereby decrease the TE, yielding significant gains in SNR. In addition, we developed a 64-channel receive coil to further increase the SNR. We compare the in vivo HARDI data with Q-Ball reconstruction at variable gradient strengths and b-values up to 15000 s/mm2 in human. The higher SNR is shown to provide improvements in ODF metrics such as the fiber uncertainty and FA.