Improve Free-Breathing Liver DWI with Motion Correction and Complex Averaging

Motivation: Free-breathing (FB) abdominal DWI is prone to motion artifacts from irregular breathing and cardiac motion, with high b-value DWI often impacted by noise bias introduced by magnitude averaging. Goal(s): This study aimed to validate motion correction and complex averaging for enhanced liver DWI image quality. Approach: FB DWI was performed with and without motion correction and complex averaging on patients with liver lesions. Image quality and ADC values were compared. Results: FB DWI reconstructed with advanced processing exhibited significantly better image quality, reduced motion artifacts, higher SNR and CNR. Impact: Advanced processing techniques, including motion correction and complex averaging, significantly reduce motion artifacts and enhance image quality in free-breathing abdominal diffusion imaging. These improvements make it highly beneficial for adoption in clinical practice.