higher amplitude current pulses in the gradient coils will give rise to stronger jolts and that the mechanical characteristics of these jolts will differ for the x y and z coils which have different winding geometries comparison of repetitive images obtained with and without high amplitude diffusion encoding gradient pulses shows that these pulses are responsible for significant image artifacts although changes in the multiplet structure of these pulses such as between multiplet 45 and multiplet 55 will clearly alter the mechanical characteristics of the jolts produced by the pulses no fixed choice of multiplet design will eliminate vibration of the apparatus fortunately one or a small number of artifact free single shot diffusion weighted images may be acquired before vibrational image artifacts are observed it is the regular repetition of identical jolts that establishes artifact inducing vibration of the patient rather than the effect of a single jolt or a small number of jolts the purpose of the invention is to make irregular changes to the characteristics of the jolts or to disturb the regular rhythm of these jolts or both thus preventing the establishment of a rhythmic pattern of vibrations in the patient for a single shot diffusion weighted acquisition of ordinary design images are obtained at ns distinct slice positions s 1 through s ns nd distinct diffusion encoding orientations d 1 through d nd and na distinct diffusion encoding sensitivities a 1 through a na the example of fig3 shows the temporal order of the s d and a values for a sequence of said ordinary design.