Robustness of Diffusion Scalar Metrics When Estimated with Generalized Q-Sampling Imaging Acquisition Schemes

Marta Morgado Correia¹, Guy B. Williams², Frank Yeh³, Ian Nimmo-Smith¹, Eleftherios Garyfallidis¹

Generalized Q-Sampling Imaging (GQI) has recently been introduced by Yeh and colleagues and was shown to have comparable accuracy to other well established q-space methods when it comes to resolving crossing fibres. In this study we compared the estimated values of MD, FA and Quantitative Anisotropy (QA) obtained with grid and shell GQI sampling schemes, in terms of their precision and ability to differentiate between different brain fibre populations. Our results suggest that a grid sampling scheme produces more robust results than a single shell acquisition.