Technical Basics of Diffusion-Weighted Imaging

Diffusion-weighted images provide a unique contrast that shows the ability to assess tissue structure and condition on a micrometer scale. Notably, these equations are necessary to understand diffusion MR imaging as a theory but not for real imaging, particularly in clinical practice. The diffusion phenomenon can be observed only through MR measurements. One of the emerging fields of diffusion MRI is to probe the tissue microstructure by altering the diffusion time t, the time interval over which spin displacements are sampled. However, the diffusion time is, in a sense, more important than the b-value for diffusion-weighted images and their quantitative metrics.