Interference of Inversion Recovery with Diffusion Weighted Imaging: Negative Apparent Diffusion Coefficients!

Thomas Gaass¹, Bram Stieltjes, Frederik Laun¹

The aim of this work was to evaluate whether diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and inversion recovery (IR) may be applied without interference. DWI of the liver shows that the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) measured in a single voxel is clearly dependent on the inversion time and ADCs vary between -0.007 s/mm and 0.009 s/mm in a 100 ms TI interval. The counterintuitive negative diffusion is observed in the liver and in regions with incomplete fat saturation. This can be explained by the here proposed two compartment model. Thus, DWI and IR can generally not be applied without interference.