Investigation of the Theoretical Background of the IVIM Model using Flow Compensated DWI

Andreas Wetscherek¹, Bram Stieltjes², Wolfhard Semmler¹, Frederik Bernd Laun¹

To answer the question whether blood flow in capillaries changes its direction during a typical diffusion experiment, flow compensated diffusion weighting gradients were used for the first time in abdominal DWI of pancreas and liver. In contrast to the TE-dependent bi-exponential signal decay observed in strongly perfused organs when using bipolar gradients, the acquired data can be modeled by a mono-exponential decay and shows no dependence on TE or on the total duration of the diffusion weighting gradients. Since net flow effects are suppressed, flow compensated diffusion weighting gradients may prove useful when investigating the vascularization structure.