A hybrid strategy for correcting geometric distortion in echo-planar images

A hybrid strategy for geometric distortion correction of echo-planar images is demonstrated. This procedure utilizes standard field mapping for signal displacement correction and the so-called reverse gradient acquisition for signal intensity correction. (The term reverse gradient refers to an acquisition of two sets of echo-planar images with phase encoding gradients of opposite polarity.) The hybrid strategy is applied to human brain echo-planar images acquired with and without diffusion-weighting. A comparison of the hybrid distortion corrected images to those corrected with standard field mapping only demonstrates much better performance of the hybrid method. A variant of the hybrid method is also demonstrated which requires the acquisition of only one pair of opposite polarity images within a set of images.