Contrast-to-Noise Ratio in Extrapolated & Measured High B-Value Diffusion Weighted Prostate MR Images

Marnix Christiaan Maas¹, Jurgen J. Ftterer¹, Tom W. J. Scheenen¹

High b-value (b>1000 s/mm2) DWI images potentially improve diagnostic accuracy, but are sensitive to artifacts and require long acquisition times for sufficient SNR. In this work we investigated high b-value images obtained by extrapolation from a set of lower b-value images, which aim to combine the diagnostic performance of high b-values with the improved SNR and reduced artifacts of lower b-values. The contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) between suspicious lesions and normal-appearing tissue in extrapolated b=1400 s/mm2 images was comparable to that in measured images, and results suggested that a slight improvement in CNR may even be achievable with extrapolated images.