Evaluating Reproducibility of the ADC and Distortion in Diffusion-weighted Imaging (DWI) with Reverse Encoding Distortion Correction (RDC)

PURPOSE: To compare image distortion and reproducibility of quantitative values between reverse encoding distortion correction (RDC) diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and conventional DWI techniques in a phantom study and in healthy volunteers. METHODS: ) were calculated from repeated scans of the phantom. Analysis was performed using Wilcoxon signed-rank test with Bonferroni correction, and P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: was within 2.99%. In the volunteers, distortion was less in RDC-DWI than in B0c-DWI in three of four locations (P < 0.006), and was less in B0c-DWI than in noDC-DWI (P < 0.006). At the middle cerebellar peduncle, distortion was less in RDC-DWI than in noDC-DWI (P < 0.006), and was less in noDC-DWI than in B0c-DWI (P < 0.0177). CONCLUSION: In both the phantom and in volunteers, distortion was the least in RDC-DWI than in B0c-DWI and noDC-DWI.