Segmented thick-slab 3D DWI with first and second order motion-compensated diffusion gradients

Routine clinical diffusion imaging is generally performed with 2D echo planar sequences. A single thick-slab 3D approach could offer higher signal-to-noise ratio and better slice resolution, but has not been adopted due to the difficulty to avoid motion-induced phase errors that interfere with multi-shot spatial encoding. A new approach to enable 3D DWI is introduced here: rather than relying on navigator echoes for phase correction, first and second order motion-compensated diffusion encoding gradients are used to minimize phase variations at the source.