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Slab profile encoding (PEN) for minimizing slab boundary artifact in three‐dimensional diffusion‐weighted multislab acquisition
Author(s) -
Van Anh T.,
Aksoy Murat,
Holdsworth Samantha J.,
Kopeinigg Daniel,
Vos Sjoerd B.,
Bammer Roland
Publication year - 2015
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.25169
Subject(s) - slab , cartesian coordinate system , artifact (error) , boundary (topology) , encoding (memory) , computer science , sensitivity (control systems) , imaging phantom , computer vision , diffusion , artificial intelligence , data acquisition , optics , iterative reconstruction , physics , mathematics , geometry , mathematical analysis , engineering , electronic engineering , geophysics , thermodynamics , operating system
Purpose To propose a method for mitigating slab boundary artifacts in three‐dimensional (3D) multislab diffusion imaging with no or minimal increases in scan time. Methods The multislab acquisition was treated as parallel imaging acquisition where the slab profiles acted as the traditional receiver sensitivity profiles. All the slabs were then reconstructed simultaneously along the slab direction using Cartesian‐based sensitivity encoding (SENSE) reconstruction. The slab profile estimation was performed using either a Bloch simulation or a calibration scan. Results Both phantom and in vivo results showed negligible slab boundary artifacts after reconstruction using the proposed method. The performance of the proposed method is comparable to the state‐of‐the‐art slab combination method without the scan time penalty that depends on the number of acquired volumes. The obtained g‐factor map of the SENSE reconstruction problem showed a maximum g‐factor of 1.7 in the region of interest. Conclusion We proposed a novel method for mitigating slab boundary artifacts in 3D diffusion imaging by treating the multislab acquisition as a parallel imaging acquisition and reconstructing all slabs simultaneously using Cartesian SENSE. Unlike existing methods, the scan time increase, if any, does not scale with the number of image volumes acquired. Magn Reson Med 73:605–613, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.