Combining SENSE and reduced field-of-view for high-resolution diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging.BACKGROUND
 In diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) using single-shot echo planar imaging (ss-EPI), both reduced field-of-view (FOV) excitation and sensitivity encoding (SENSE) alone can increase in-plane resolution to some degree.  However, when the two techniques are combined to further increase resolution without pronounced geometric distortion, the resulted images are often corrupted by high level of noise and artifact due to the numerical restriction in SENSE.  The proposed reconstruction method was developed and implemented to deal with the high level of noise and artifact in the combination of reduced FOV imaging and traditional SENSE, in which all the imaging data were considered jointly by incorporating the motion induced phase variations among excitations.  The in vivo human spine diffusion images from ten subjects were acquired at 1.5 T and reconstructed using the proposed method, and compared with SENSE magnitude average results for a range of reduction factors in reduced FOV.  The proposed method was able to reconstruct images with greatly reduced noise and artifact compared to SENSE magnitude average.  The image quality scores of the proposed method were significantly higher (P < 0.01) than SENSE magnitude average for all the evaluated reduction factors.


 The proposed method can improve the combination of SENSE and reduced FOV for high-resolution ss-EPI DWI with reduced noise and artifact.
SENSE
Combining SENSE and reduced field-of-view for high-resolution diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging.BACKGROUND
 In diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) using single-shot echo planar imaging (ss-EPI), both reduced field-of-view (FOV) excitation and sensitivity encoding (SENSE) alone can increase in-plane resolution to some degree. 
reduced field-of-view
In diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) using single-shot echo planar imaging (ss-EPI), both reduced field-of-view (FOV) excitation and sensitivity encoding (SENSE) alone can increase in-plane resolution to some degree. 
single-shot echo planar imaging (ss-EPI)
In diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) using single-shot echo planar imaging (ss-EPI), both reduced field-of-view (FOV) excitation and sensitivity encoding (SENSE) alone can increase in-plane resolution to some degree. 
sensitivity encoding (SENSE)