Comparison of uniform-density, variable-density and dual-density spiral samplings for multi-shot diffusion-weighted imaging

Different multi-shot spiral sampling schemes have been developed for high-resolution DWI. However, the performances of these sampling strategies such as variable-density spiral (VDS), dual-density spiral (DDS) and uniform-density spiral (UDS) have not been compared comprehensively. In this study, we compare multi-shot UDS, VDS and DDS in brain DWI in terms of inter-shot phase error correction, overall image quality and SNR performance. Both theoretical analysis and in-vivo results demonstrate that UDS exhibits the best off-resonance performance among the three spiral sampling patterns. Additionally, UDS achieves the highest SNR in diffusion imaging over the VDS and DDS acquisitions.