Sharon Portnoy1, Wenxing Ye2,
Alireza Entezari2, Stephen J. Blackband3,4, Baba C.
Vemuri2
1Department of
Neuroscience, University of Florida, Gainesville , FL, United States; 2CISE
department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States; 3Department
of Neuroscience, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States; 4National
High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Tallahassee, FL, United States
We propose a novel interlaced multi-shell q-space sampling scheme, which uses two different polyhedra, the icosidodecahedron and rhombic triacontahedron, to determine the sample distributions on odd and even q-shells. Comparison of simulated and acquired MR data shows that the interlaced scheme provides greater accuracy in the reconstruction of the 3D diffusion propagator relative to standard multi-shell schemes. Accuracy of the interlaced method is improved even further by interpolation of q-space samples onto a body-centered-cubic (rather than Cartesian) sampling grid. These techniques provide a significant improvement in our ability to resolve the complex fibre architectures within biological tissues.