Kieran R. O'Brien1,2, Nils Kickler3,
Francois Lazeyras1, Rolf Gruetter3, Thorsten Feiweier4,
Gunnar Krueger5
1Department of Radiology,
Universit de Genve, Geneva, Switzerland; 2Laboratory for
Functional & Metabolic Imaging, Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne,
Lausanne,, Switzerland; 3Laboratory for Functional & Metabolic
Imaging, Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; 4Siemens
Healthcare Sector, Erlangen, Germany; 5Advanced Clinical Imaging
Technology, Siemens Suisse SA, Lausanne, Switzerland
The current correction methods available to remove geometric image distortions seen in eddy current (EC) sensitive diffusion weighting (DW) echo planar imaging involve time intensive EC field measurements or have limited reliability at high b-values (>1000s/mm2). We propose a 3D-EC field measurement tune-up scan to model and to predict the 0th/1st order ECs originating from the applied DW-gradients. After 0th and 1st order distortion correction, EC induced spatial misalignments are visibly reduced and the image quality becomes comparable to the currently clinically preferred twice refocused spin echo scheme.