Diffusion and multiple orientations from 1.5 MR systems with limited gradient tables

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) enables the quantification of water diffusion, influenced by the structure of biological tissues, from the acquisition of diffusion weighted magnetic resonance images (DW-MRI). While recent advances enable to recover complex fiber geometries using diffusion measurements along various sampling schemes of high order [4], some older MR systems work with limited gradient tables (ex: maximum of 6 or 12 directions). These systems are designed for Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). Several hospitals and research institutes in the world are limited by these fixed DTI gradient sets. Therefore, groups that want to perform state-of-the-art tractography using high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) data are pernalized and can only perform DTI tractography on their old system. The Gaussian assumption of the tensor model, in DTI, is an over simplification of the diffusion phenomenon of water molecules in the brain and thus cannot resolve crossing fibers. In this work, we show that new diffusion signal modeling and processing techniques enable to capture complex angular structure of the diffusion process even from a reduced gradient direction set arising from an older MR system.