Motion-robust sub-millimeter isotropic diffusion imaging through motion corrected generalized slice dithered enhanced resolution (MC-gSlider) acquisition

Purpose: To develop an efficient MR technique for ultra-high resolution diffusion MRI (dMRI) in the presence of motion.

Methods: gSlider is an SNR-efficient high-resolution dMRI acquisition technique. However, subject motion is inevitable during a prolonged scan for high spatial resolution, leading to potential image artifacts and blurring. In this study, an integrated technique termed Motion Corrected gSlider (MC-gSlider) is proposed to obtain high-quality, high-resolution dMRI in the presence of large in-plane and through-plane motion. A motion-aware reconstruction with spatially adaptive regularization is developed to optimize the conditioning of the image reconstruction under difficult through-plane motion cases. In addition, an approach for intra-volume motion estimation and correction is proposed to achieve motion correction at high temporal resolution.

Results: Theoretical SNR and resolution analysis validated the efficiency of MC-gSlider with regularization, and aided in selection of reconstruction parameters. Simulations and in vivo experiments further demonstrated the ability of MC-gSlider to mitigate motion artifacts and recover detailed brain structures for dMRI at 860 μm isotropic resolution in the presence of motion with various ranges.

Conclusion: MC-gSlider provides motion-robust, high-resolution dMRI with a temporal motion correction sensitivity of 2 s, allowing for the recovery of fine detailed brain structures in the presence of large subject movements.