Gradient field nonlinearities in diffusion-weighted MRI may lead to systematic errors in the diffusion metrics. Despite previous works highlighting the adverse impact of gradient field nonuniformities on diffusion-weighted MRI, these effects are usually neglected and left uncorrected. In this work we use simulations and real data from the Human Connectome Project to investigate the effect of gradient field nonlinearities on the measures from Diffusional Kurtosis Imaging. Our results demonstrated that in general, the effect for the diffusion tensor metrics is larger than the effect for diffusional kurtosis metrics. However, the effect of the gradient nonlinearities on the kurtosis metrics should not be neglected.
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