Comparison of Diffusion Metrics Obtained at 1.5T and 3T in Human Brain With Diffusional Kurtosis Imaging

摘要: Purpose To quantitatively compare diffusion metrics for human brain estimated with diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI) at applied field strengths of 1.5 and 3T. Materials methods DKI data were acquired both 3T from each six healthy volunteers using a twice-refocused diffusion-weighted sequence. From these data, parametric maps mean diffusivity (MD), axial (D‖ ), radial (D⊥ fractional anisotropy (FA), (MK), (K‖ (K⊥ (KFA) estimated. Comparisons the results two made metric Bland-Altman plots linear regression to calculate coefficients determination (R2 ) best fit lines. Results Diffusion measured observed be similar. Linear full datasets had varying low R2 = 0.86 KFA high 0.97 FA. The slopes vs. 1.5T fits varied 0.881 ± 0.009 1.038 0.010 D‖ . analysis selected regions interest, differences all found less than 6%, except KFA, which showed largest relative discrepancy 10%. Conclusion are strongly correlated typically differ by only few percent. somewhat higher is argued mainly reflect effects signal noise. This supports robustness respect strength. Level evidence 3 J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2017;45:673-680.