Abstract #3669

Effect of Combination of B Values and Rician Noise Filter on Diffusional Kurtosis and Tensor Imaging Metrics in Spinal Cord in vivo

Masaaki Hori¹, Koji Kamagata¹, Mariko Yoshida¹, Nozomi Hamasaki², Keigo Shimoji¹, Yuriko Suzuki³, Yoshitaka Masutani⁴, Issei Fukunaga⁵,⁶, Shigeki Aoki¹

¹Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Juntendo University, Tokyo, Japan; ²Juntendo University Hospital, Tokyo, Japan; ³Philips Electronics Japan, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan; ⁴Division of Radiology, and Biomedical Engineering, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; ⁵Department of Radiology, Juntendo University, Tokyo, Japan; ⁶Graduate School of Human Health Sciences, Tokyo, Japan

The purpose of this exhibit is to present the effects of the combinations of b-values and Rician noise filter for DTI and DKI metrics in the spinal cord, for clinical use in particular. The different combinations of b values result in the different diffusion metrics, such as mean kurtosis. Therefore, suitable selection of b values is important for the specific purpose of the study. Moreover, Rician denoising technique lead to appropriate DKI and DTI metrics estimation, mean kurtosis in particular because the diffusion MR images of spinal cord often suffer from low signal-to-noise ratio in vivo.