Valentina Taviani1, Sidharta Nagala2, Andrew N. Priest3, Mary A. McLean4, Martin J. Graves3
1Department of Radiology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States; 2Department of Otolaryngology, Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, United Kingdom; 3Department of Radiology, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, United Kingdom; 4Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute, Li Ka Shing Centre, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Diffusion-weighted (DW) echo planar imaging (EPI) in the thyroid can benefit from reduced field of view (r-FOV) techniques to reduce off-resonance-induced distortion and blurring due to T2* decay. In this work, we used a 2D spatially selective RF pulse integrated into a dual spin echo DW single-shot (SS) EPI pulse sequence to perform contiguous, multi-slice, fat-suppressed, r-FOV, DW imaging of the thyroid gland at 3T. The r-FOV technique was compared with the conventional full-FOV DW-SS-EPI and the beneficial effects of an optimal B1 reconstruction strategy on the measured apparent diffusion coefficients were investigated in phantom experiments and healthy volunteers.
Keywords