Jens Hesselberg Jensen1, Caixia Hu1, Joseph A. Helpern1,2
1Radiology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA; 2Center for Advanced Brain Imaging, Nathan Kline Institute, Orangeburg, NY, USA
By utilizing an optimized data acquisition scheme together with a more efficient analysis algorithm, it is shown how to substantially reduce, compared to established approaches, the imaging and post-processing times for diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI), a recent extension of diffusion tensor imaging which allows measures of diffusional non-Gaussianity to be estimated. This improved procedure permits full brain coverage to be obtained within a few minutes, thus facilitating the incorporation of DKI into clinical protocols. The rapid analysis algorithm should also make possible real-time DKI post-processing.