Correction of Artifacts Induced by <scp> B ₀ </scp> Inhomogeneities in Breast <scp>MRI</scp> Using Reduced? <scp>Field?of?View Echo?Planar</scp> Imaging and Enhanced Reversed Polarity Gradient Method

Background Diffusion-weighted (DW) echo-planar imaging (EPI) is prone to geometric distortions due B0 inhomogeneities. Both prospective and retrospective approaches have been developed decrease correct such distortions. Purpose The purpose of this work was evaluate the performance reduced-field-of-view (FOV) acquisition distortion correction methods in decreasing artifacts for breast imaging. Coverage axilla reduced-FOV DW magnetic resonance (MRI) residual were also assessed. Study Type Retrospective. Population/Phantom Breast phantom 169 women (52.4 ± 13.4 years old) undergoing clinical MRI. Field Strength/Sequence A 3.0 T/ full- gradient-echo EPI sequence. Assessment Performance reversed polarity gradient (RPG) FSL topup correcting data evaluated using mutual information (MI) metric between anatomical images. Two independent radiologists determined if coverage on both sets adequate axillary nodes identified nipple artifacts. Statistical Tests Two-way repeated-measures analyses variance post hoc tests used identify differences modality method. Generalized linear mixed effects models distortion. Results In a phantom, 0.16 0.07 cm 0.22 0.13 reduced- full-FOV with methods, respectively. patients, MI significantly increased after (11 5% 18 9%, RPG topup) (8 4% both) data. Axillary observed 99% 69% cases Residual 93% 0% Data Conclusion Minimal achieved applied improved images but more modest improvements limited near nipple. Evidence Level 3 Technical Efficacy Stage 1