Patent ID: 8406849

Claim:
A method for operating an MRI system in diffusion imaging, comprising the steps of: providing a single Diffusion-Prepared Driven-Equilibrium preparation (DPDE) for a localized imaging volume comprising a first excitation RF pulse followed by first and second successive RF inversion pulses, said first and second successive RF inversion pulses determining the localized imaging volume for imaging with the first inversion pulse inverting magnetization and the second inversion pulse and accompanying phase encoding gradient restoring magnetization to a non-selected portion of said localized imaging volume; acquiring Diffusion-weighted MRI imaging (DWI) and Diffusion-tensor MRI imaging (DTI) 3-dimensional k-space data from the prepared localized imaging volume by applying a plurality of stimulated echo planar imaging (EPI) pulse sequence acquisitions of a selected portion of said localized imaging volume, in response to said single diffusion-prepared driven-equilibrium preparation; and reconstructing and generating medical images of said localized imaging volume using the acquired DWI and DTI 3-dimensional k-space data, in response to said single diffusion-prepared driven-equilibrium preparation.