On the problem of gradient calibration in diffusion weighted imaging

A calibration method for diffusion‐weighted imaging using an isotropic phantom is proposed. The key point of the method consists in finding optimized balancing times for different orientations of diffusion‐encoding gradients followed by retrospective rescaling of the diffusion‐weighted images. The correction protocol was applied to produce improved fractional anisotropy maps which were analyzed with statistical histograms. The results demonstrate that the described scheme of systematic error reduction is a valid approach for quality control studies of gradient system performance for diffusion‐weighted imaging. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 21, 271–279, 2011;