Abstract
Although diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been widely used for the quantitative analyses of the integrity of white matter in the brain in clinical and research fields, quality assurance (QA) for DTI has not been fully established. Thus, we suggest a QA guideline for DTI using the American College of Radiology (ACR) Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) head phantom. In this study, the geometric accuracy, slice-position accuracy, image intensity uniformity, percent signalghosting, low-contrast object detectability, image distortion, fractional anisotropy (FA), and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) were measured and evaluated in 1.5T and 3.0T MRI scanners equipped with an 8-channel SENSE head coil. The standard axial spin echo (SE) T1-weighted MR images and DTI with 6, 15 and 32 directions were obtained. Concerning geometric accuracy, image twisting in the three directions was observed due to the inhomogeneity of echo planar imaging (EPI). Image intensity uniformity was significantly lower for DTI than for the standard SE T1-weighted MR images. Percent signal ghosting was higher for images from 3.0T MRI than for images from 1.5T MRI. Low-contrast object detectability was visually identified and measured at a low contrasttonoise ratio (CNR) and a low signaltonoise ratio (SNR). Image distortion changed remarkably to the phaseencoding direction. The present study using the ACR MRI phantom suggests a QA method for DTI with high reproducibility and easy accessibility.
Similar content being viewed by others
Refrerences
D. E. Vaillancourt et al., Neurology 72, 1378 (2009).
M. L. Lipton et al., Radiology 252, 816 (2009).
G. Nicoletti et al., Neurology 74, 988 (2010).
J. G. Raya et al., Radiology 262, 550 (2012).
J. H. Lee et al., Journal of the Korean Physical Society 58, 343 (2011).
S. Mattila et al., Magn. Reson Med 57, 754 (2007).
N. Yanasak and J. Allison, Magn. Reson Imaging 24, 1349 (2006).
C. C. Chen, Y. L. Wan, Y. Y. Wai and H. L. Liu, J. Digit Imaging 17, 279 (2004).
Z. J. Wang, Y. Seo, J. M. Chia and N. K. Rollins, Med. Phys. 38, 4415 (2011).
http://www.acr.org/accreditation/mri.
P. S. Tofts et al., Magn. Reson Med. 43, 368 (2000).
M. Holz, S. R. Heil, A. Sacco, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys 2, 4740 (2000).
O. Dietrich, M. F. Reiser, S. O. Schoenberg, Eur. J. Radiol. 65, 29 (2008).
Q. X. Yang et al., Magn. Reson Med. 52, 1418 (2004).
M. A. Horsfield, Magn. Reson Imaging 17, 1335 (1999).
N. Chen and A. M. Wyrwicz, Magn. Reson Med. 45, 525 (2001).
J. L. R. Andersson, S. Skare and J. Ashburner, Neuroimage 20, 870 (2003).
G. K. Rohde et al., Magn. Reson Med. 51, 103 (2004).
T. Jaermann et al., Magn. Reson Med. 51, 230 (2004).
P. J. Basser, NMR Biomed 8, 333 (1995).
T. Jaermann et al., Magn. Reson Med. 51, 230 (2004).
D. K. Jones, Magn. Reson Med. 51, 807 (2004).
B. A. Landman et al., NeuroImage 36, 1123 (2007).
I. Delakis, E. M. Moore, M. O. Leach and J. P. D. De Wilde, Phys. Med. Biol. 49, 1409 (2004).
S. J. Teipel et al., Psychiatry Res 194, 363 (2011).
M. Watanabe et al., Radiat Med. 24, 605 (2006).
C. Reischauer, P. Staempfli, T. Jaermann and P. Boesiger, J. Magn. Reson Imaging 29, 692 (2009).
E. Farrher et al., Magn. Reson Imaging 30, 518 (2012).
P. Pullens, Roebroeck A, Goebel R, J. Magn. Reson Imaging 32, 482 (2010).
J. Berberat et al., Acta Radiol 54, 576 (2013).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lee, JH., Kim, SY., Lee, DW. et al. Quality assurance for diffusion tensor imaging using an ACR phantom: Comparative analysis with 6, 15, and 32 directions at 1.5T and 3.0T MRI systems. Journal of the Korean Physical Society 65, 103–110 (2014). https://doi.org/10.3938/jkps.65.103
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3938/jkps.65.103