Mustafa Okan Irfanoglu1,2, Lindsay Walker2,
Carlo Pierpaoli2
1Department of Radiology, The Ohio
State University, Columbus, OH, United States; 2NICHD, National
Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States
The
distortions on phase-encoding direction of diffusion weighted images due to
magnetic susceptibility and concomitant fields greatly affect the quality and
consistency of tractography using on diffusion sequences. In this work, data
from a healthy population were acquired in both Right-Left and
Anterior-Posterior phase encoding directions and the effects of these
distortions and EPI distortion correction were analyzed on specific fiber
bundles. Results indicate tracts are greatly affected by these distortions
and consistency and quality of the tracts are improved with correction and
that this correction process should be part of typical diffusion sequences
acquired for tractography purposes.