Prospective Correction Rigid-Body Motion-Induced Phase for Diffusion-Weighted SSFP Imaging

Rafael O'Halloran¹, Anh Tu Van¹, Eric Aboussouan¹, Murat Aksoy¹, Roland Bammer¹

Diffusion-weighted SSFP Imaging is an alternative to single-shot spin echo EPI that can provide high resolution (<1.5mm isotropic) DWI and DTI images. Because Diffusion-weighted SSFP is a multi-shot technique, motion-induced phase errors can cause reconstruction issues and most critically, can cause loss of steady-state phase coherence. Phase navigation has been shown to help retrospectively to mitigate loss of image magnitude but errors remain because phase errors accrued during a particular TR propagate into all coherence pathways derived from the transverse phase states of that TR. This ultimately results in disruption of the steady state. In this work phase navigation is used to prospectively correct the rigid-body component of motion-induced phase and is shown to improve signal magnitude in a phantom-based feasibility study.