Premium
DWI of the spinal cord with reduced FOV single‐shot EPI
Author(s) -
Saritas Emine Ulku,
Cunningham Charles H.,
Lee Jin Hyung,
Han Eric T.,
Nishimura Dwight G.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.696
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1522-2594
pISSN - 0740-3194
DOI - 10.1002/mrm.21640
Subject(s) - echo planar imaging , sagittal plane , spinal cord , physics , field of view , nuclear magnetic resonance , single shot , magnetic resonance imaging , pulse (music) , diffusion mri , signal (programming language) , nuclear medicine , biomedical engineering , optics , medicine , computer science , anatomy , radiology , detector , psychiatry , programming language
Single‐shot echo‐planar imaging (ss‐EPI) has not been used widely for diffusion‐weighted imaging (DWI) of the spinal cord, because of the magnetic field inhomogeneities around the spine, the small cross‐sectional size of the spinal cord, and the increased motion in that area due to breathing, swallowing, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pulsation. These result in artifacts with the usually long readout duration of the ss‐EPI method. Reduced field‐of‐view (FOV) methods decrease the required readout duration for ss‐EPI, thereby enabling its practical application to imaging of the spine. In this work, a reduced FOV single‐shot diffusion‐weighted echo‐planar imaging (ss‐DWEPI) method is proposed, in which a 2D spatially selective echo‐planar RF excitation pulse and a 180° refocusing pulse reduce the FOV in the phase‐encode (PE) direction, while suppressing the signal from fat simultaneously. With this method, multi slice images with higher in‐plane resolutions (0.94 × 0.94 mm 2 for sagittal and 0.62 × 0.62 mm 2 for axial images) are achieved at 1.5 T, without the need for a longer readout. Magn Reson Med 60:468–473, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.