• Jiancheng Zhuang, Zhong-Lin Lu, Christine Bouteiller Vidal, and Hanna Damasio.
• Dana and David Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA. jc.zhuang@gmail.com
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2013 Jun 1; 37 (6): 1460-7.

PurposeTo correct distortions caused by eddy currents induced by large diffusion gradients during high angular resolution diffusion imaging without any auxiliary reference scans.Materials And MethodsImage distortion parameters were obtained by image coregistration, performed only between diffusion-weighted images with close diffusion gradient orientations. A linear model that describes distortion parameters (translation, scale, and shear) as a function of diffusion gradient directions was numerically computed to allow individualized distortion correction for every diffusion-weighted image.ResultsThe assumptions of the algorithm were successfully verified in a series of experiments on phantom and human scans. Application of the proposed algorithm in high angular resolution diffusion images markedly reduced eddy current distortions when compared to results obtained with previously published methods.ConclusionThe method can correct eddy current artifacts in the high angular resolution diffusion images, and it avoids the problematic procedure of cross-correlating images with significantly different contrasts resulting from very different gradient orientations or strengths.Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

17 keywords...

hide…