Abstract #2495

Laplacian Filtering: A Simple and Robust Technique for Reducing Artifacts in Susceptibility Weighted Imaging (SWI)

Ferdinand Schweser¹,², Andreas Deistung¹, Martin Stenzel³, Hans-Joachim Mentzel³, Jrgen R. Reichenbach¹

¹Medical Physics Group, Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology I, Jena University Hospital - Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany; ²School of Medicine, Jena University Hospital - Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany; ³Section Pediatric Radiology, Jena University Hospital - Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany

Susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) is a novel imaging technique that exploits the MR phase information to delineate venous vessels and brain lesions. Various approaches have been presented to avoid severe off-resonance artifacts in SWI due to the strong field gradients induced, e.g., by the air-tissue interfaces above the nasal cavities. However, all of these techniques involve rather complex and laborious data processing based on raw complex-valued MR images, which are usually not available in commercial SWI implementations. In this contribution we present a simple and robust post-processing technique that allows eliminating the wrap-artifacts in SWI. The technique may be applied both retrospectively on filtered phase images (commercial SWI) and prospectively on raw complex-valued images.