New high-performance whole-body gradients to clarify Intravoxel incoherent motion DWI based multi-parametric MRI of prostate: Initial results

We demonstrate the feasibility of obtaining high b-value (b > 2400 s/mm2) DWI images of the prostate obtained with short echo times (TE ~ 50 ms) on a prototype high-performance whole-body gradient system (Gmax = 200 mT/m, and SRmax = 200 T/m/s). Preliminary results from volunteers suggest that the apparent differences in the perfusion fraction metric of the IVIM model between the transition and peripheral zones of the prostate partly can be substantially diminished by choosing a shorter TE using high-performance gradients.