Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of spinal cord holds great promise to aid diagnosis of spine-related diseases. However, it is greatly limited in clinics by the physiological motion induced artifacts and susceptibility inhomogeneity induced distortions. To reduce distortions in DTI, various multi-shot EPI (MS-EPI) methods have been proposed. However, the acquisition time is prolonged due to multiple shots. In this study, we achieved cervical spine DTI using only 6 shots based on a distortion- and blurring- free MS-EPI technique, Point-Spread-Function Encoded EPI (PSF-EPI). The acquisition time is within 5 minutes. The efficacy of PSF-EPI is demonstrated on healthy volunteers and patients.
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