Investigating noise distribution changes after motion correction and its effects on subsequent diffusion MRI processing

Abstract

The quantification of diffusion MRI assumes the absence of motion and anatomical correspondence between diffusion sensitizing factors. To investigate the impact of processing order between motion correction and two denoising methods, we evaluated DKI and NODDI derived maps. Using repeated scans acquired with and without voluntary motion, three processing orders were compared. Results show that processing order moderately influences NODDI maps. However, two of the three denoising strategies can reduce outliers in mean kurtosis between 28% and 59% when compared to motion correction only.