Physical Orientation in the Magnetic Field Affects Diffusion Measures: A Hardware Phantom Study

Pim Pullens^1,2, Alard Roebroeck¹, Matteo Bastiani¹, Rainer Goebel^1,2, Kamil Uludag¹

We investigated the effect of orientation of an anisotropic diffusion phantom on the diffusion MRI signal and derived measures: b0 signal, FA and the first eigen value. Our results show considerable variations in b0, FA and the first eigenvalue in the anisotropic phantom at different orientations of the phantom in the magnetic field. These findings have important implications for diffusion MRI in tissue with varying anisotropic structures such as white matter.