Purpose: Estimation of multi-compartment intravoxel 'flow' in in ml/100g/min with multi-b-value diffusion weighted imaging and a multi-Gaussian model in the kidneys.
Theory And Methods: A multi-Gaussian model of intravoxel flow using water transport time to quantify (ml/100g/min) is presented and simulated. Multi-compartment anisotropic DWI signal is simulated with Rician noise and SNR=50 and analyzed with a rigid bi-exponential, a rigid tri-exponential and diffusion spectrum imaging model of intravoxel incoherent motion (spectral diffusion) to study extraction of multi-compartment flow.
Objective: To evaluate the feasibility of in-vivo quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) of the human kidney.
Methods: An axial single-breath-hold 3D multi-echo sequence (acquisition time 33 s) was completed on a 3 T-MRI-scanner (Magnetom Prisma, Siemens Healthineers, Erlangen, Germany) in 19 healthy volunteers. Graph-cut-based unwrapping combined with the T*-IDEAL approach was performed to remove the chemical shift of fat and to quantify QSM of the upper abdomen.