Eric Aliotta1,2, Holden H Wu1,2, and Daniel B Ennis1,2
1Radiological Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States, 2Biomedical Physics IDP, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Spin Echo EPI Diffusion Weighted MRI (SE-EPI DWI) is widely used for neuro applications because of its speed. Conventional SE-EPI DWI approaches, however, often require long echo times (TE) which degrade SNR. Because SNR is inherently limited in high b-value DWI, TE must be kept as short as possible to ensure high-quality DWI. A Convex Optimized Diffusion Encoding (CODE) framework was developed to design waveforms which eliminate sequence dead times and minimize TE. CODE gradients were designed and implemented on a 3.0T scanner and demonstrated improved SNR in neuro DWI for healthy volunteers.
