High Resolution Diffusion Weighted Imaging of Pancreatic Neoplasms Using 2D Ss-RFOV-DWEPI at 3 Tesla

Chao Ma¹, Yan Li¹, He Wang², Shiyue Chen¹, Jianping Lu¹

DWI has been mostly acquired using single-shot echo-planar imaging (SS EPI) to minimize motion induced artifacts. The spatial resolution, however, is inherently limited in SS EPI, even with the advances in parallel imaging. A novel method of reduced Field of View SS EPI (rFOV SS EPI) has achieved high resolution DWI in human carotid artery, spinal cord with reduced blurring and higher spatial resolution than conventional SS EPI. In the study, we optimized the rFoV technique, compared this with standard ss EPI, to demonstrate the feasibility of pancreatic high resolution rFOV DWI; and report HR DWI features of various pancreatic neoplasms.