Eddy Solomon1, Gilad Liberman1, Noam Nissan2, and Lucio Frydman1
1Chemical Physics Department, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, 2Biological Regulation Department, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
A
recently proposed single-shot MRI methodology, SPatio-temporal ENcoding
(SPEN), was evaluated for its usefulness in DTI experiments. SPEN’s direct
image acquisition is not bound by k-space sampling criteria, thereby enabling
the use of stronger gradients during its monitoring of the low-bandwidth
dimension. This helps it to overcome
image distortions arising from field inhomogeneities, eddy currents and
heterogeneous chemical environments. Single-shot and interleaved DTI SPEN measurements
were tested under various pre-clinical and clinical settings, and the formalism
needed to extract reliable DTI maps from SPEN data was derived. Substantial advantages
in terms of overcoming EPI distortions were observed.