Tounekti S, Alizadeh M, Middleton D, Harrop JS, Bassem H, Krisa L, Mekkaoui C, Mohamed FB. Metal Artifact Reduction Around Cervical Spine Implant Using Diffusion Tensor Imaging at 3T: A Phantom Study.
RESEARCH SQUARE 2023:rs.3.rs-2665952. [PMID:
36993535 PMCID:
PMC10055636 DOI:
10.21203/rs.3.rs-2665952/v1]
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Abstract
Diffusion MRI continues to play a key role in non-invasively assessing spinal cord integrity and pre-operative injury evaluation. However, post-operative Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) acquisition of a patient with a metal implant results in severe geometric image distortion. A method has been proposed here to alleviate the technical challenges facing the acquisition of DTI in post-operative cases and to evaluate longitudinal therapeutics. The described technique is based on the combination of the reduced Field-Of-View (rFOV) strategy and the phase segmented acquisition scheme (rFOV-PS-EPI) for significantly mitigating metal-induced distortions. A custom-built phantom based on spine model with metal implant was used to collect high-resolution DTI data at 3 Tesla scanner using a home-grown diffusion MRI pulse sequence, rFOV-PS-EPI, single-shot (rFOV-SS-EPI), and the conventional full FOV techniques including SS-EPI, PS-EPI, and the readout-segmented (RS-EPI). This newly developed method provides high-resolution images with significant reduced metal-induced artifacts. In contrast to the other techniques, the rFOV-PS-EPI allows DTI measurement at the level of the metal hardware whereas the current rFOV-SS-EPI is useful when the metal is approximately 20 mm away. The developed approach enables high-resolution DTI in patients with metal implant.
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