Enhancing quality in Diffusion Tensor Imaging with anisotropic anomalous diffusion filter

Abstract Introduction: Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is an important medical imaging modality that has been useful to the study of microstructural changes in neurological diseases. However, the image noise level is a major practical limitation, in which one simple solution could be the average signal from a sequential acquisition. Nevertheless, this approach is time-consuming and is not often applied in the clinical routine. In this study, we aim to evaluate the anisotropic anomalous diffusion (AAD) filter in order to improve the general image quality of DTI. Methods A group of 20 healthy subjects with DTI data acquired (3T MR scanner) with different numbers of averages (N=1,2,4,6,8, and 16), where they were submitted to 2-D AAD and conventional anisotropic diffusion filters. The Relative Mean Error (RME), Structural Similarity Index (SSIM), Coefficient of Variation (CV) and tractography reconstruction were evaluated on Fractional Anisotropy (FA) and Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) maps. Results The results point to an improvement of up to 30% of CV, RME, and SSIM for the AAD filter, while up to 14% was found for the conventional AD filter (p