Highly undersampled diffusion weighted image data sets are acquired for a plurality of different directions using a projection reconstruction pulse sequence. The acquired projection views are interleaved and are combined to form a more highly sampled data set that is used to reconstruct a composite image. A DWI image is reconstructed from each undersampled data set for each direction using a highly constrained backprojected method that employs the composite image. Diffusion tensor values are calculated from the DWI images.