Rachel Wai-chung Chan1,
Sebastian Kozerke2, 3, Daniel Giese3, Jack
Harmer3, Christian T. Stoeck2, Constantin von Deuster2,
3, Andrew Peter Aitken3, David Atkinson1
1Centre
for Medical Imaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom; 2Institute
for Biomedical Engineering, University and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; 3Division
of Imaging Sciences, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
In diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), time-varying eddy-currents over long readout durations cause images from different directions to be misregistered. Using a field camera with 16 NMR probes, higher-order spatial phase offsets from eddy-currents were measured and used for correction of misregistration artifacts in renal DTI. The unipolar Stejskal-Tanner and velocity-compensated bipolar sequences were compared. Phantom experiments reveal that higher-order correction is beneficial for the unipolar sequence. In an in vivo experiment where both kidneys in a healthy volunteer were simultaneously imaged, the fractional anisotropy (FA) maps showed improved image quality with eddy-current correction.