Cross Site Reproducibility for standard and ultra-high b-value diffusion imaging in high-performance gradient (MAGNUS 3T) MRI systems.

Motivation: Cross-site reproducibility of ultra-high b-value diffusion MRI across multiple MAGNUS MRI systems is important for multi-site studiesGoal(s): To disentangle the contributions of physiological fluctuations vs. manufacturing tolerances to inform future cross-site studies for advanced and novel brain microstructural modelling and quantificationApproach: A traveling volunteer was recruited and imaged at three different MAGNUS (2nd generation) systems. An expanded multi-shell parameter space ranging from b=500-30,000 s/mm2 was analysed quantitatively to assess cross-site reproducibility. Results: Statistical comparisons across sites for global white matter and white matter parcels highlight good agreement without harmonization efforts. Impact: This dataset is expected to lay the ground work for multicenter collaboration for novel and advanced brain microstructural modelling and quantification. It can further be used to evaluate differences across scanners and to show the consistency of pipeline outputs.