Variational approach for recovering viscoelasticity from MRE data

Abstract

This paper deals with an inverse problem for recovering the viscoelasticity of a living body from MRE (Magnetic Resonance Elastography) data. Based on a viscoelastic partial differential equation whose solution can approximately simulate MRE data, the inverse problem is transformed to a least square variational problem. This is to search for viscoelastic coefficients of this equation such that the solution to a boundary value problem of this equation fits approximately to MRE data with respect to the least square cost function. By computing the Gateaux derivatives of the cost function, we minimize the cost function by the projected gradient method is proposed for recovering the unknown coefficients. The reconstruction results based on simulated data and real experimental data are presented and discussed.