RAD-IQMRI: A benchmark for MRI image quality assessment

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is susceptible to visual artifacts that can degrade the perceptual image quality, potentially leading to inaccurate or inefficient diagnoses in clinical practice. It is critical to evaluate the perceptual image quality and build this technique into clinical solutions. In a previous study, an MRI database was created for image quality assessment (IQA), where various types of MRI artifacts with different degrees of degradation were simulated. Application specialists assessed the image quality; however, radiologists’ perception of MRI image quality remains unknown. To make IQA clinically relevant, in this paper we conduct a new subjective experiment where 13 radiologists rated the quality of images contained in the MRI database. Based on this subjective IQA benchmark named RAD-IQMRI, we evaluate the performance of state-of-the-art objective IQA models, providing insights into their application for MRI image quality assessment in clinical settings.