The Diffusion Sensitivity of Turbo Spin Echo Sequences Significantly Depends on the Relaxation Times and Diffusion Coefficient

Matthias Weigel¹, Jrgen Hennig¹

Recent work showed that modern types of turbo spin echo sequences (TSE) using low and varying refocusing flip angles and high resolution such as SPACE, VISTA, and CUBE have an inherent diffusion sensitivity b_eff, which can generate participating diffusion contrast in the image. The current work demonstrates that these b_eff are not sequence-specific constants, on the contrary, they notably depend on the relaxation times and T2 in particular, as well as on the diffusion coefficient. Thus, TSE inherent diffusion sensitivity significantly depends on the tissue, which is also valid for TSE based preparation schemes such as the superstimulated echo mechanism.