DIFFUSION SPECTRUM IMAGING SYSTEMS AND METHODS

Systems and methods for generating a magnetic resonance (MR) image of a tissue are provided. A method includes acquiring MR raw data. The MR raw data corresponds to MR signals obtained at undersampled q-space locations for a plurality of q-space locations that is less than an entirety of the q-space locations and the MR signals at the q-space locations represent the three dimensional displacement distribution of the spins in the imaging voxel. The method also includes performing a joint image reconstruction technique on the MR raw data to exploit structural correlations in the MR signals to obtain a series of accelerated MR images and performing, for each image pixel in each accelerated MR image of the series of accelerated MR images, a compressed sensing reconstruction technique to exploit q-space signal sparsity to identify a plurality of diffusion maps.