Chiang CW, et al. - In this prospective study involving 15 naïve Sprague–Dawley rats, researchers assessed how signal averaging influences the reliability of diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) indices utilizing two gradient encoding schemes with three spatial resolutions. The data presented in this work showed a higher number of diffusion directions would benefit the estimation of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean kurtosis (MK). Investigators observed that a higher spatial resolution helps to decrease partial volume effect. MK is considered a robust index reflecting microstructural changes in gray matter and white matter by using the 30d-3b scheme. A systematic approach was proposed to determine the optimal DKI protocols for appropriate preclinical settings.