Lee, P. K.; Chen, S.; Zhong, S.; Wang, C.; Zhang, Z.

Low-cost portable MRI has the potential to improve the accessibility of MRI, but new acquisition methods and protocols must be developed and evaluated to accommodate the reduction in SNR and greater impact of system imperfections. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a candidate tool for monitoring population health, but the bias and variance of quantitative diffusion tensor-derived metrics must be evaluated prior to designing such studies. DTI of the corpus callosum was performed on an in-house, portable 100 mT MRI system using a slab diffusion weighted Fast Spin Echo with radiofrequency (RF) encoding. Slice coverage was restricted to the corpus callosum to shorten scan time and reduce sensitivity to large rigid motion. In vivo DTI images were obtained in two healthy volunteers with nominal voxel size 50 mm3, scan time 25 minutes, and two different volunteers using nominal voxel size 25 mm3, scan time 35 minutes. Mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) coefficients of variation were estimated in the 50 mm3 acquisition using a bootstrap approach and compared to resolution-matched data obtained on a conventional 1.5T system. MD / FA maps were compared quantitatively and qualitatively. Mean MD values in the corpus callosum obtained on the 100 mT system were within 10% of the reference 1.5T acquisition, but FAs were underestimated by 20-30%. The corpus callosum median MD coefficient of variation was 3.7%, and the median FA coefficient of variation was 7.5%. FA maps obtained at 100 mT had an elevated FA noise floor and color FA maps had lower apparent resolution but some white matter tracts were still distinguishable.