Systematic errors confound wide-spread clinical use of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) for diagnostic and prognostic applications. Standard clinical diffusion sequences using single-spin-echo echo-planner-imaging are susceptible to gradient channel-specific eddy-currents for b>0 inducing distortions of voxel magnetization-density (MD), as well as geometric distortion. Unlike geometric distortion that are largely correctable by image registration to b=0, persisting signal amplitude distortions lead to systematic spatially-dependent errors mimicking, but physically distinct from, non-uniform diffusion weighting induced by gradient nonlinearity (GNL). This study proposes the use of geometric distortion parameters derived from in-plane image registration for MD correction of ADC in presence of GNL.
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