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Updated: Sep 5, 2026
Diffusion Imaging in the Rat Cervical Spinal Cord
Published on: April 7, 2015
Comparative evaluation of zoomed and parallel diffusion-weighted imaging: A phantom study
Akiyoshi Iwase1, Yasuo Takatsu2, Naoki Ohno1
1Division of Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan.
Objectives:
Single-shot echo-planar imaging sequences with parallel imaging are widely used for diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). However, when small fields of view and higher phase-encoding reduction ratios (PRs) are applied, image quality may deteriorate because of imperfections in the unfolding process of parallel imaging. Previous studies have suggested that Zoomed DWI (Zoom-DWI) may address this limitation. Therefore, we compared Zoom-DWI with parallel DWI (Parallel-DWI) across different PRs to evaluate image quality.
Material And Methods:
Zoom-DWI and Parallel-DWI were performed using identical acquisition times and imaging parameters at different PRs. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), image uniformity, slice thickness, spatial resolution, and image distortion were evaluated.
Results:
At a PR of 66.6%, the SNR of Zoom-DWI was approximately 1.4-3.3-fold higher than that of Parallel-DWI at the image center, where reconstruction errors in parallel imaging become more pronounced as PR increases. Image uniformity was also higher in Zoom-DWI than in Parallel-DWI, and the difference increased by approximately 41.0% at a PR of 66.6%. Slice thickness, spatial resolution, and image distortion were comparable between the two methods.
Conclusion:
In this phantom study, Zoom-DWI demonstrated higher SNR and greater image uniformity than Parallel-DWI, particularly at higher PRs and in the central image region.
