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Abstract

Background

Abdominal diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) has been rapidly increasing during the last few years. For the evaluation of new DWI techniques, the development of suitable phantoms and quality assurance methods is important.

Purpose

To construct a body-diameter phantom for abdominal DWI and study the impact of different acquisition options on image quality.

Material and Methods

A phantom with a diameter of 31 cm and a volume of 26 L was constructed, containing four samples representing a clinically relevant range of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values. Measurements were carried out on 1.5T and 3.0T MRI systems using conventional echo-planar imaging (EPI), readout-segmented EPI, and zoomed EPI (3.0T) sequences. The effects of parallel imaging, coil intensity normalization, and patient-specific B₁ shim (3.0T) were also examined. ADC values and signal-to-noise ratios of the samples were measured, and the level of artifacts was visually evaluated.

Results

The agreement of ADC values between different acquisition options was generally good, but higher values (by 0.07 × 10^–3 mm²/s on the average) with readout-segmented EPI as well as ADC variations of approximately 0.1 × 10^–3 mm²/s in slice direction were observed. The image artifacts were reduced by using patient-specific B₁ shim, readout-segmented EPI, or zoomed EPI.

Conclusion

The body-sized phantom demonstrated well the expected image artifacts in DWI with large field of view. The use of patient-specific B₁ shim, readout-segmented EPI, or zoomed EPI improved image quality of DWI in this study.

Keywords

Magnetic resonance (MR) diffusion/perfusion imaging sequences quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC)

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A body-sized phantom for evaluation of diffusion-weighted MRI data using conventional,readout-segmented,and zoomed echo-planar sequences

Abstract

Background

Purpose

Material and Methods

Results

Conclusion

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material