Implementation and application of PSF-based EPI distortion correction to high field animal imaging.
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.
Paul
Dominik
D
Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Medical Physics, University Hospital Freiburg, 79106 Freiburg, Germany. domisoffice@googlemail.com
Zaitsev
Maxim
M
Harsan
Laura
L
Kurutsch
Anja
A
Splitthoff
Daniel Nico
DN
Hennel
Franciszek
F
Choli
Morwan
M
von Elverfeldt
Dominik
D