Method and apparatus for performing diffusion spectrum imaging

Abstract

A method of generating a magnetic resonance (MR) image of a tissue includes acquiring MR signals at undersampled q-space encoding locations for a plurality of q-space locations that is less than an entirety of the q-space locations sampled at the Nyquist rate, wherein the acquired signal at the q-space locations represents the three-dimensional displacement distribution of the spins in the imaging voxel, synthesizing the MR signal for the entirety of q-space encodings using a compressed sensing technique for a portion of q-space locations at which MR data was not acquired, combining the acquired MR signals at q-space encodings and the synthesized MR signals at q-space encodings to generate a set of MR signals at q-space encodings that are evenly distributed in q-space, using the set of MR signals at q-space encodings to generate a function that represents a displacement probability distribution function of the set of spins in the imaging voxel, and generating an image of the tissue based on at least a portion of the generated function. A system and computer readable medium are also described herein.