Clinical Application of Readout-Segmented (RS)-EPI for Diffusion-Weighted Imaging in Pediatric Brain

Samantha J. Holdsworth¹, Kristen Yeom¹, Stefan Skare¹, Patrick David Barnes¹, Roland Bammer¹

Readout-segmented (RS)-EPI has been suggested as an alternative approach to EPI for high resolution diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) with reduced distortions. Here we implemented GRAPPA-accelerated RS-EPI DWI on 35 pediatric patients at 3T. We compared these images with standard accelerated (ASSET) EPI DWI used routinely for pediatric clinical studies. Images were categorized by resolution, distortion level, SNR, lesion conspicuity, and diagnostic confidence. RS-EPI out-performed ASSET EPI and demonstrated that it may be a useful method for DWI for evaluating lesions such as hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, diffuse axonal injury, tumors, dermoid/epidermoid, and skull base/orbital pathology.