The effect of the acquisition parameters in HARDI

One of the recent challenges in diffusion imaging is to find acquisition schemes and analysis approaches that can represent non-Gaussian diffusion profiles in a clinically feasible measurement time. In this work we investigate the effect of the b value and the number of gradient vector directions on the HARDI models Q-ball imaging and the Diffusion Orientation Transform (DOT) in a structured way using computational simulations, hardware crossing-fiber diffusion phantoms, and in-vivo brain scans. We quantify the angular resolution of the reconstructed probability profiles under different acquisition schemes. We vary the b value and number of gradients directions to investigate their effects and interaction. Knowledge of the suitable acquisition parameters in clinical setting, for different HARDI diffusion models, where still satisfying results are obtained given the high noise impact on the data, is of significant importance in this emerging area.

@InProceedings { PRPVH09a,
  author       = "Prckovska, V. and Roebroeck, Alard F. and Pullens, Pim and Vilanova, Anna and Haar Romeny, B.M. ter",
  title        = "The effect of the acquisition parameters in HARDI",
  booktitle    = "Proceedings of the 17th Scientific Meeting \& Exhibition of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in
                  Medicine, 18-24 April 2009, Honolulu",
  year         = "2009",
  address      = "United States, Honolulu",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2009/PRPVH09a"
}