Slab profile encoding (PEN) for minimizing slab boundary artifact in three‐dimensional diffusion‐weighted multislab acquisition

Van, Anh T.; Aksoy, Murat; Holdsworth, Samantha J.; Kopeinigg, Daniel; Vos, Sjoerd B.; Bammer, Roland

doi:10.1002/mrm.25169

Cited by 36 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 14 publications

(26 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A downside is that the scan time is increased compared with 2D imaging, by the need to acquire different k z -encodes. To address this, Van et al (2015) have proposed a SENSE-like reconstruction to reconstruct all 3D slabs simultaneously, providing an increase in speed of roughly 25–50%. It is important to note here that 3D multi-slab has a higher SNR per unit time, or SNR efficiency (Engstrom and Skare 2013), but the minimum scan time per volume is higher.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade-off between angular and spatial resolutions in in vivo fiber tractography

et al. 2016

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tractography is becoming an increasingly popular method to reconstruct white matter connections in vivo. The diffusion MRI data that tractography is based on requires a high angular resolution to resolve crossing fibers whereas high spatial resolution is required to distinguish kissing from crossing fibers. However, scan time increases with increasing spatial and angular resolutions, which can become infeasible in clinical settings. Here we investigated the trade-off between spatial and angular resolutions to determine which of these factors is most worth investing scan time in. We created a unique diffusion MRI dataset with 1.0 mm isotropic resolution and a high angular resolution (100 directions) using an advanced 3D diffusion-weighted multi-slab EPI acquisition. This dataset was reconstructed to create subsets of lower angular (75, 50, and 25 directions) and lower spatial (1.5, 2.0, and 2.5 mm) resolution. Using all subsets, we investigated the effects of angular and spatial resolutions in three fiber bundles—the corticospinal tract, arcuate fasciculus and corpus callosum—by analyzing the volumetric bundle overlap and anatomical correspondence between tracts. Our results indicate that the subsets of 25 and 50 directions provided inferior tract reconstructions compared with the datasets with 75 and 100 directions. Datasets with spatial resolutions of 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 mm were comparable, while the lowest resolution (2.5 mm) datasets had discernible inferior quality. In conclusion, we found that angular resolution appeared to be more influential than spatial resolution in improving tractography results. Spatial resolutions higher than 2.0 mm only appear to benefit multi-fiber tractography methods if this is not at the cost of decreased angular resolution.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade-off between angular and spatial resolutions in in vivo fiber tractography

et al. 2016

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It has been shown previously that this DWI sequence, with phase-encoding gradients applied along the slice-direction for 3D encoding, has higher SNR efficiency than 2D DWI and is well suitable for high-resolution imaging (Engstrom et al, 2014; Engstrom and Skare, 2013; Frank et al, 2010; Frost et al, 2014; Frost et al, 2013; Van et al, 2014). …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Previous studies have shown that the slab thickness should be smaller than 30mm in DWI scans with 1000 s/mm 2 b -value (Engstrom et al, 2014; Engstrom and Skare, 2013; Frost et al, 2013; Van et al, 2014), otherwise the artifacts resulting from through-slab phase variations may not be well suppressed by 2D phase correction. In our study, the slab thickness was set to only 9.4 mm in DWI scans with 800 s/mm 2 b -value, and therefore the through-slab phase variations were insignificant.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although this approach is obviously not ideal, we were able to demonstrate, as a proof of concept, the feasibility of acquiring DTI data at submillimeter resolution on a clinical scanner. In order to acquire whole-brain high-resolution DTI data within a more acceptable scan time (e.g., < 30 min), one has to use an appropriate 3D imaging RF pulse (Engstrom et al, 2014; Engstrom and Skare, 2013; Frank et al, 2010; Frost et al, 2014; Frost et al, 2013; Van et al, 2014) or incorporate the recently developed approaches that minimize the through-plane banding artifacts in 3D DTI scans (Van et al, 2014). In addition, the 3D DTI scan time can be reduced by incorporating partial Fourier scans along the k z direction (e.g., acquiring only 7 out of the 12 k z planes), although at the cost of SNR.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Human brain diffusion tensor imaging at submillimeter isotropic resolution on a 3 Tesla clinical MRI scanner

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The advantages of high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) have been demonstrated in a recent post-mortem human brain study (Miller et al., NeuroImage 2011;57(1):167–181), showing that white matter fiber tracts can be much more accurately detected in data at submillimeter isotropic resolution. To our knowledge, in vivo human brain DTI at submillimeter isotropic resolution has not been routinely achieved yet because of the difficulty in simultaneously achieving high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in DTI scans. Here we report a 3D multi-slab interleaved EPI acquisition integrated with multiplexed sensitivity encoded (MUSE) reconstruction, to achieve high-quality, high-SNR and submillimeter isotropic resolution (0.85 × 0.85 × 0.85 mm3) in vivo human brain DTI on a 3 Tesla clinical MRI scanner. In agreement with the previously reported post-mortem human brain DTI study, our in vivo data show that the structural connectivity networks of human brains can be mapped more accurately and completely with high-resolution DTI as compared with conventional DTI (e.g., 2 × 2 × 2 mm3).

show abstract

“…To reduce banding artifacts when stitching the reconstructed slabs together, slab profiles were normalized before profile encoding (PEN) (Van et al, 2015) was performed using a slab profile derived through the Bloch equations. With a 20% overlap between adjacent slabs, the 18 reconstructed slabs were stitched together to produce 144mm of brain coverage in z.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

3D-MB-MUSE: A robust 3D multi-slab, multi-band and multi-shot reconstruction approach for ultrahigh resolution diffusion MRI

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent advances in achieving ultrahigh spatial resolution (e.g. sub-millimeter) diffusion MRI (dMRI) data have proven highly beneficial in characterizing tissue microstructures in organs such as the brain. However, the routine acquisition of in-vivo dMRI data at such high spatial resolutions has been largely prohibited by factors that include prolonged acquisition times, motion induced artifacts, and low SNR. To overcome these limitations, we present here a framework for acquiring and reconstructing 3D multi-slab, multi-band and interleaved multi-shot EPI data, termed 3D-MB-MUSE. Through multi-band excitations, the simultaneous acquisition of multiple 3D slabs enables whole brain dMRI volumes to be acquired in-vivo on a 3 Tesla clinical MRI scanner at high spatial resolution within a reasonably short amount of time. Representing a true 3D model, 3D-MB-MUSE reconstructs an entire 3D multi-band, multi-shot dMRI slab at once while simultaneously accounting for coil sensitivity variations across the slab as well as motion induced artifacts commonly associated with both 3D and multi-shot diffusion imaging. Such a reconstruction fully preserves the SNR advantages of both 3D and multi-shot acquisitions in high resolution dMRI images by removing both motion and aliasing artifacts across multiple dimensions. By enabling ultrahigh resolution dMRI for routine use, the 3D-MB-MUSE framework presented here may prove highly valuable in both clinical and research applications.

show abstract

Slab profile encoding (PEN) for minimizing slab boundary artifact in three‐dimensional diffusion‐weighted multislab acquisition

Cited by 36 publications

References 14 publications

Trade-off between angular and spatial resolutions in in vivo fiber tractography

Trade-off between angular and spatial resolutions in in vivo fiber tractography

Human brain diffusion tensor imaging at submillimeter isotropic resolution on a 3 Tesla clinical MRI scanner

3D-MB-MUSE: A robust 3D multi-slab, multi-band and multi-shot reconstruction approach for ultrahigh resolution diffusion MRI

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About