Julien
Cohen-Adad1, M Dylan Tisdall1, Ralph Kimmlingen2,
Eva Eberlein2, Thomas Witzel1, Philipp Hoecht2,
Boris Keil1, Juergen Nistler2, Dietmar Lehne2,
Keith Heberlein3, Jennifer A. McNab1, Herbert Thein2,
Franz Schmitt2, Bruce R. Rosen1, Van J. Wedeen1,
Lawrence L. Wald1, 4
1A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States; 2Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany; 3Siemens Healthcare, Boston, United States; 4Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States
In this work we used a novel Connectom Gradient (AS302) system specifically designed to achieve ultra-high gradient strength (Gmax = 300 mT/m , about 7.5 fold stronger than clinical scanners). This enables to shorten the diffusion-encoding time and thereby decrease the TE, yielding significant gains in SNR. In addition, we developed a 64-channel receive coil to further increase the SNR. We compare the in vivo HARDI data with Q-Ball reconstruction at variable gradient strengths and b-values up to 15000 s/mm2 in human. The higher SNR is shown to provide improvements in ODF metrics such as the fiber uncertainty and FA.