Quality Assurance of Diffusion and Fat Imaging using System Phantoms: Reproducibility for Multivendor Neuromuscular Studies

Motivation: Our multi-site studies require quality assurance for diffusion and proton density fat fraction (PDFF) imaging across vendors. Goal(s): To establish DWI and PDFF protocols and analysis tools to evaluate reproducibility and reliability. Approach: DWI and PDFF protocols were conducted on two 3T MRI systems (Philips and GE) on a diffusion phantom and a PDFF phantom. The measured ADC and PDFF values were compared across the scanners and also compared with the phantom reference values. Correlation coefficient and root-mean-square error (RMSE) were reported. Results: High reproducibility and high accuracy were achieved across the MRI vendors as indicated by the correlation coefficients and RMSE. Impact: Our results showed that quality assurance can be well maintained between the two MRI scanners, both DWI and PDFF measured on the two scanners at our institute are reliable and accurate, this has important implications for our future multi-site studies.