Emine Ulku Saritas1, Ajit Shankaranarayanan2, Eric T. Han2, Joelle K. Barral1, Jin Hyung Lee1, Dwight George Nishimura1
1Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; 2Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, USA
DWI has recently been recognized as a potential clinical tool for the diagnosis, assessment and treatment monitoring of cancer outside the central nervous system (CNS). Even though single-shot EPI (ss-EPI) is the preferred method for these applications, its resolution is limited. Recently, a reduced FOV method using a 2D echo-planar RF (2D-EPRF) excitation pulse has been proposed for high-resolution ss-EPI DWI. In this work, we present the investigated improvements on this method, particularly optimization of the 2D-EPRF pulse to allow its use in various parts of the body. Specifically, we apply the improved method to in vivo prostate, breast and larynx DWI to demonstrate the high-resolution DWI capability of the reduced-FOV ss-EPI method, with improved coverage in the slice direction.