Simultaneous Multislice Accelerated Interleaved EPI DWI Using Generalized Blipped-CAIPI Acquisition and 3D K-Space Reconstruction

作者：Dai, Erpeng; Ma, Xiaodong; Zhang, Zhe; Yuan, Chun; Guo, Hua^*

来源：Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 2017, 77(4): 1593-1605.

DOI：10.1002/mrm.26249

• diffusion-weighted imaging
• interleaved EPI
• simultaneous multislice
• blipped-CAIPI
• SMS 3D k-space
• high-resolution DWI

Purpose: Simultaneous multislice (SMS) has been proved to be powerful for accelerating single-shot echo-planar imaging (ssh-EPI) based diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), but there are some obstacles for applying SMS to interleaved echo-planar imaging (iEPI) DWI. The primary challenge is to effectively combine slice unfolding for SMS and intershot phase correction for multishot DWI. In this study, a novel acquisition and reconstruction method for SMS-accelerated high-resolution iEPI DWI is proposed.
Theory and Methods: The traditional blipped-controlled aliasing in parallel imaging (blipped-CAIPI) for ssh-EPI is generalized for iEPI acquisitions. An SMS three-dimensional (3D) navigator acquisition is designed to record the intershot phase variations. Then, slice unfolding and intershot phase correction are performed simultaneously in an SMS 3D k-space. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated in both four-shot and eight-shot iEPI DWI and compared with ssh-EPI and unaccelerated iEPI DWI.
Results: The proposed method successfully unfolded the simultaneously excited slices and effectively suppressed artifacts from intershot phase variations. The SMS-accelerated iEPI improved the imaging efficiency, while preserving comparable image quality as unaccelerated iEPI DWI.
Conclusions: The proposed acquisition and reconstruction is an effective method for accelerating multishot high-resolution DWI, which may be valuable for both neuroscience research and clinical diagnosis.

• 出版日期2017-4
• 单位清华大学