Patent ID: 7511494

Claim:
A method for producing an image of a subject with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, the steps comprising: a) applying an rf excitation field to the subject to produce transverse magnetization therein; b) applying a two-dimensional diffusion weighting gradient to the transverse magnetization, the two-dimensional diffusion weighting gradient including: i) a first orthogonal gradient produced by a first gradient waveform whose integral is substantially zero; and ii) a second orthogonal gradient that is orthogonal to the first orthogonal gradient and produced by a second gradient waveform whose integral is substantially zero; wherein the first and second gradient waveforms sensitize the transverse magnetization to diffusion in at least a two-dimensional plane; c) acquiring NMR signals produced by the sensitized transverse magnetization; d) reconstructing an image with the acquired NMR signals; and e) calculating the magnitude of the NMR signal at each of a plurality of voxels in the reconstructed image to produce a magnitude image.