title: Implementation and application of PSF-based EPI distortion correction to high field animal imaging.
abstract: The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the functionality and performance of a PSF-based geometric distortion correction for high-field functional animal EPI. The EPI method was extended to measure the PSF and a postprocessing chain was implemented in Matlab for offline distortion correction. The correction procedure was applied to phantom and in vivo imaging of mice and rats at 9.4T using different SE-EPI and DWI-EPI protocols. Results show the significant improvement in image quality for single- and multishot EPI. Using a reduced FOV in the PSF encoding direction clearly reduced the acquisition time for PSF data by an acceleration factor of 2 or 4, without affecting the correction quality.
authors.affiliation: Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Medical Physics, University Hospital Freiburg, 79106 Freiburg, Germany. domisoffice@googlemail.com
authors.forename: Dominik
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Paul
authors.forename: Maxim
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zaitsev
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Harsan
authors.forename: Anja
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kurutsch
authors.forename: Daniel Nico
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Splitthoff
authors.forename: Franciszek
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hennel
authors.forename: Morwan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Choli
authors.forename: Dominik
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: von Elverfeldt