In diffusion-weighted (DW) imaging with EPI readout, Nyquist ghost (NG) artifacts might be aggravated due to higher order eddy currents, especially when using monopolar DW gradients in single-refocused spin-echo EPI (srSE-EPI). Both linear and point-by-point phase corrections were tested on DW-srSE-EPI and, for comparison, also on DW twice-refocused spin-echo EPI (trSE-EPI) with intrinsic eddy-current compensation. Both phase correction methods performed equally well for DW-trSE-EPI. However, for DW-srSE-EPI with high b-values, the linear phase correction failed to fully correct NG artifacts. In contrast, point-by-point phase correction yielded considerably better results. This was confirmed in vitro and in vivo.
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