Geometric Distortion Correction of DTI using Accelerated PSF Mapping Based Reconstruction at 7 Tesla

Myung-Ho In¹, Oliver Speck¹

Although diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) allows the observation of molecular diffusion in tissues, it severely suffers from distortions due to B0 field inhomogeneity, susceptibility, chemical shift, as well as eddy current effects, especially at ultra high field such as 7T. These artifacts cause geometric and intensity distortions in MR image formation. Moreover, the distortions vary with the diffusion gradient direction. In this study, an acceleration point spread function (PSF) mapping based reconstruction is proposed in order to correct for direction-dependent distortions in diffusion tensor imaging. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can fully correct the direction-dependent distortions with high fidelity.