Gy. Liu et al., SINGLE-SHOT DIFFUSION MRI OF HUMAN BRAIN ON A CONVENTIONAL CLINICAL INSTRUMENT, Magnetic resonance in medicine, 35(5), 1996, pp. 671-677
A single-shot diffusion MRI technique on a standard clinical 1.5T scan
ner is presented. The method incorporates the following elements: (a)
an inversion RF pulse followed by a delay of 1.3 s to null cerebral sp
inal fluid (CSF) signal, (b) a stimulated echo sequence (TE = 56 ms, T
M = 100 ms) to obtain strong diffusion weighting, (c) a single-shot gr
adient- and spin-echo (GRASE) sequence for imaging with a modified k-s
pace trajectory and Carr-Purcell Meiboom-Gill (CPMG)-phase cycle. The
trace of the diffusion coefficient obtained with this approach is in g
ood agreement with values reported for animal brain, and for recent hu
man studies. It is demonstrated that single-shot diffusion imaging of
human brain is feasible on an unmodified standard instrument without h
igh-gradient slew rate or extreme field homogeneity.