Magnetic Resonance Imaging Reconstruction Algorithm Research Articles

Transformer- and joint learning-based dual-domain networks for undersampled MRI segmentation.

Recently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become a crucial medical imaging technology widely used in clinical practice. However, MRI faces challenges such as the lengthy acquisition time for k-space data and the need for time-consuming manual annotation by radiologists. Traditionally, these challenges have been addressed individually through undersampled MRI reconstruction and automatic segmentation algorithms. Whether undersampled MRI segmentation can be enhanced by treating undersampled MRI reconstruction and segmentation as an end-to-end task, trained simultaneously, rather than as serial tasks should beexplored. We introduce a novel Transformer- and Joint Learning-based Dual-domain Network (TJLD-Net) for undersampled MRIsegmentation. This method significantly enhances feature recognition in the segmentation process by fully utilizing the rich detail obtained during the image reconstruction phase. Consequently, the method can achieve precise and reliable image segmentation even with undersampled k-space data. Additionally, it incorporates an attention mechanism for feature enhancement, which improves the representation of shared features by learning the contextual information in MRimages. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the segmentation performance of TJLD-Net on three datasets is significantly higher than that of the joint model (RecSeg) and six baseline models (where reconstruction and segmentation are regarded as serial tasks). On the CHAOS dataset, the Dice scores of TJLD-Net are, on average, 9.87%, 2.17%, 1.90%, 1.80%, 9.60%, 0.80%, and 6.50% higher than those of the seven compared models. On the ATLAS challenge dataset, the average Dice scores of TJLD-Net improve by 4.23%, 5.63%, 2.30%, 1.53%, 3.57%, 0.93%, and 6.60%. Similarly, on the SKM-TEA dataset, the average Dice scores of TJLD-Net improve by 4.73%, 12.80%, 14.83%, 8.67%, 4.53%, 11.60%, and 12.10%. The novel TJLD-Net model provides a promising solution for undersampled MRI segmentation, overcoming the poor performance issues encountered by automated segmentation algorithms in low-quality acceleratedimaging.

Magnetic resonance image reconstruction based on image decomposition constrained by total variation and tight frame.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a commonly used tool in clinical medicine, but it suffers from the disadvantage of slow imaging speed. To address this, we propose a novel MRI reconstruction algorithm based on image decomposition to realize accurate image reconstruction with undersampled k-space data. In our algorithm, the MR images to be recovered are split into cartoon and texture components utilizing image decomposition theory. Different sparse transform constraints are applied to each component based on their morphological structure characteristics. The total variation transform constraint is used for the smooth cartoon component, while the L0 norm constraint of tight frame redundant transform is used for the oscillatory texture component. Finally, an alternating iterative minimization approach is adopted to complete the reconstruction. Numerous numerical experiments are conducted on several MR images and the results consistently show that, compared with the existing classical compressed sensing algorithm, our algorithm significantly improves the peak signal-to-noise ratio of the reconstructed images and preserves more image details. Our algorithm harnesses the sparse characteristics of different image components to reconstruct MR images accurately with highly undersampled data. It can greatly accelerate MRI speed and be extended to other imaging reconstruction fields.

Improved Sensitivity Encoding Parallel Magnetic Resonance Imaging Reconstruction Algorithm Based on Efficient Sum of Outer Products Dictionary Learning

Improved Sensitivity Encoding Parallel Magnetic Resonance Imaging Reconstruction Algorithm Based on Efficient Sum of Outer Products Dictionary Learning

Retraction: Magnetic resonance imaging reconstruction algorithm under complex convolutional neural network in diagnosis and prognosis of cerebral infarction.

Retraction: Magnetic resonance imaging reconstruction algorithm under complex convolutional neural network in diagnosis and prognosis of cerebral infarction.

Specificity-Preserving Federated Learning for MR Image Reconstruction.

Federated learning (FL) can be used to improve data privacy and efficiency in magnetic resonance (MR) image reconstruction by enabling multiple institutions to collaborate without needing to aggregate local data. However, the domain shift caused by different MR imaging protocols can substantially degrade the performance of FL models. Recent FL techniques tend to solve this by enhancing the generalization of the global model, but they ignore the domain-specific features, which may contain important information about the device properties and be useful for local reconstruction. In this paper, we propose a specificity-preserving FL algorithm for MR image reconstruction (FedMRI). The core idea is to divide the MR reconstruction model into two parts: a globally shared encoder to obtain a generalized representation at the global level, and a client-specific decoder to preserve the domain-specific properties of each client, which is important for collaborative reconstruction when the clients have unique distribution. Such scheme is then executed in the frequency space and the image space respectively, allowing exploration of generalized representation and client-specific properties simultaneously in different spaces. Moreover, to further boost the convergence of the globally shared encoder when a domain shift is present, a weighted contrastive regularization is introduced to directly correct any deviation between the client and server during optimization. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our FedMRI's reconstructed results are the closest to the ground-truth for multi-institutional data, and that it outperforms state-of-the-art FL methods.

M4Raw: A multi-contrast, multi-repetition, multi-channel MRI k-space dataset for low-field MRI research

Recently, low-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has gained renewed interest to promote MRI accessibility and affordability worldwide. The presented M4Raw dataset aims to facilitate methodology development and reproducible research in this field. The dataset comprises multi-channel brain k-space data collected from 183 healthy volunteers using a 0.3 Tesla whole-body MRI system, and includes T1-weighted, T2-weighted, and fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) images with in-plane resolution of ~1.2 mm and through-plane resolution of 5 mm. Importantly, each contrast contains multiple repetitions, which can be used individually or to form multi-repetition averaged images. After excluding motion-corrupted data, the partitioned training and validation subsets contain 1024 and 240 volumes, respectively. To demonstrate the potential utility of this dataset, we trained deep learning models for image denoising and parallel imaging tasks and compared their performance with traditional reconstruction methods. This M4Raw dataset will be valuable for the development of advanced data-driven methods specifically for low-field MRI. It can also serve as a benchmark dataset for general MRI reconstruction algorithms.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evaluation of Hemangioma Resection for Encephalofacial Angiomatosis (Sturge-Weber Syndrome) in Children under Intelligent Algorithm.

This study was aimed to evaluate the clinical efficacy of hemangioma resection in the treatment of infantile encephalofacial angiomatosis (Sturge–Weber syndrome, SWS) through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images, and intelligent algorithms were employed to process MRI images. A retrospective study of 45 children diagnosed with facial hemangioma admitted to hospital was conducted. Then, MRS images were acquired, and a mathematical model for MRI image denoising and reconstruction was constructed based on nonlocal similar block low-rank prior algorithms. The processing effect was assessed regarding the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity (SSIM). Finally, MRI images were collected to analyze the difference between the metabolites of N-acetylaspartic acid (NAA), creatine (Cr), choline (Cho), and their ratios in the lesions of the children before and after treatment. The improvement rate was analyzed through a twelve-month follow-up. The algorithm test results showed that compared with the classic K-singular value decomposition (K-SVD) denoising algorithm and the Sparse MRI reconstruction algorithm, the proposed algorithm processed MRI images more clearly and had more detailed information. The quantitative results showed that the PSNR and SSIM in the image processed by the algorithm proposed were remarkably large. The clinical treatment results showed that compared with those before treatment, the nCho level after treatment, the ratio of Cho/Cr and Cho/NAA were remarkably reduced, and the difference was remarkable (P < 0.05). The follow-up results showed that the considerable improvement rate was 88.89%, the postoperative organ remodeling rate was 17.78%, and the probability of reoperation was only 6.67%. In summary, the introduction of intelligent algorithms for denoising and reconstruction of MRI images can remarkably improve image quality and help doctors use image information to diagnose diseases and evaluate treatment effects. The hemangioma resection for the treatment of pediatric SWS had a high treatment improvement rate and was worthy of clinical adoption.

Magnetic resonance imaging reconstruction algorithm under complex convolutional neural network in diagnosis and prognosis of cerebral infarction.

This study was to explore the application value of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) image reconstruction model based on complex convolutional neural network (CCNN) in the diagnosis and prognosis of cerebral infarction. Two image reconstruction methods, frequency domain reconstruction network (FDRN) and image domain reconstruction network (IDRN), were introduced based on the CCNN algorithm. In addition, they were integrated to form two new MRI image reconstruction models, namely D-FDRN and D-IDRN. The peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) value and structural similarity index measure (SSIM) value of the image were compared and analyzed before and after the integration. The MRI images of patients with cerebral infarction in the dataset were undertaken as the data source, the average diffusion coefficient (DCavg) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values of different parts of the MRI image were measured, respectively. The correlation of the vein abnormality grading (VABG) to the infarct size and the degree of stenosis of the responsible vessel was analyzed in this study. The results showed that the PSNR and SSIM values of the MRI reconstructed image of the D-IDRN algorithm based on the CCNN algorithm in this study were higher than those of other algorithms. There was a positive correlation between the VABG and the infarct size (r = 0.48 and P = 0.002), and there was a positive correlation between the VABG the degree of stenosis of the responsible vessel (r = 0.58 and P < 0.0001). The ADC value of the central area of the infarct on the affected side was significantly greatly lower than that of the normal side (P < 0.01), and the DCavg value of the central area of the infarct was much lower in contrast to the normal side (P < 0.05). It indicated that an image reconstruction algorithm constructed in this study could improve the quality of MRI images. The ADC value and DCavg value changed in the infarct central area could be used as the basis for the diagnosis of cerebral infarction. If the vein was abnormal, the patient suffered from severe vascular stenosis, large infarction area, and poorer prognosis.

Compressed Sensing-Based Simultaneous Recovery of Magnitude and Phase MR Images via Dual Trigonometric Sparsity

Complex-valued Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is widely used in clinical diagnosis. The magnitude images are mainly used for structure visualization, and the phase images reveal tissue properties, such as magnetic susceptibility and fluid flow information. While MRI is slow, compressed sensing (CS) can be used to reconstruct the accelerated acquisitions. Current CS-based MRI reconstruction algorithms mostly focus on magnitude image recovery, with less attention to the recovery of phase images. In this paper, we propose a novel CS algorithm to simultaneously recover the magnitude and phase MR images based on the sparsity of the trigonometric function. The CS method requires a sparse representation of the original images, and it is observed the trigonometric functions of phase images in the Wavelet domain promote sparsity. Therefore, rather than transforming the phase images directly into the Wavelet domain, we calculate the sine and cosine of the phase images whose Wavelet transforms are set as the L1-norm regularization term. The combination of the dual trigonometric functions captures a unique, faithful four-quadrant phase information, which also improves the reconstructed magnitude images through an alternating optimization procedure. Reconstructions of simulated images and in vivo images are studied, and both show the superiority of the proposed method over compared phase recovery algorithms.

Efficient directionality-driven dictionary learning for compressive sensing magnetic resonance imaging reconstruction.

Compressed sensing is an acquisition strategy that possesses great potential to accelerate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) within the ambit of existing hardware, by enforcing sparsity on MR image slices. Compared to traditional reconstruction methods, dictionary learning-based reconstruction algorithms, which locally sparsify image patches, have been found to boost the reconstruction quality. However, due to the learning complexity, they have to be independently employed on successive MR undersampled slices one at a time. This causes them to forfeit prior knowledge of the anatomical structure of the region of interest. An MR reconstruction algorithm is proposed that employs the double sparsity model coupled with online sparse dictionary learning to learn directional features of the region under observation from existing prior knowledge. This is found to enhance the capability of sparsely representing directional features in an MR image and results in better reconstructions. The proposed framework is shown to have superior performance compared to state-of-art MRI reconstruction algorithms under noiseless and noisy conditions for various undersampling percentages and distinct scanning strategies.

Multi-Resolution Parallel Magnetic Resonance Image Reconstruction in Mobile Computing-Based IoT

In the mobile computing-based Internet of Things, the computational complexity of applications is constrained by the capacity of the user equipment. In order to reduce the computational complexity of compressed sensing (CS)-based magnetic resonance image (MRI) reconstruction algorithms, we propose a novel multi-resolution-based parallel MRI reconstruction framework in this paper. We break down CS-based MRI reconstruction problem into four independent low-resolution image reconstruction sub-problems. Compared with the original problem, each sub-problem has a lower computational complexity. Assigned to four cores of the central processing unit (CPU), the sub-problems are solved simultaneously, and therefore the MRI reconstruction is accelerated. The combination of reconstructed low-resolution images achieves high-resolution image reconstruction. The proposed framework is applicable to the state-of-the-art CS-based MRI reconstruction algorithms to compute low-resolution images and involves multi-resolution processing. Compared with conventional serial computing, the proposed MRI reconstruction framework speeds at least four times up. Therefore, the parallel computation framework is especially suitable for widely used mobile devices with lower computational capability than workstations. To validate and evaluate the proposed scheme, when selecting the outstanding MRI reconstructing algorithm fast dictionary learning method on classified patches for numerical simulation, peak-signal-to-noise-ratio values of parallel reconstruction results are at least 0.929 dB higher than that of serial computation reconstruction results calculated by classical MRI reconstruction algorithm.

Compressed-Sensing MRI Based on Adaptive Tight Frame in Gradient Domain

Compressed-sensing magnetic resonance imaging (CSMRI) aims to reconstruct the magnetic resonance (MR) image from highly undersampled K-space data. In order to improve the reconstruction quality of the MR image, this paper proposes a new gradient-based tight frame (TFG) learning algorithm (TFG-MRI) for CSMRI. TFG-MRI effectively integrates the tight frame learning technique and total variation into the same framework. In TFG-MRI, the inherent gradient sparsity of the MR image in gradient domain is utilized to represent the sparse prior knowledge, and the sparse priors in the horizontal and vertical gradient directions are exploited to learn adaptive tight frames for reconstructing the desired images. Particularly, we employ the l0-norm to promote the sparsity of the gradient image. The sparse representations of TFG are adapted for the horizontal and vertical gradient information of MR images. TFG-MRI can effectively help to capture edge contour structures in the gradient images, and to preserve more detail information of MR images. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed TFG-MRI can reconstruct MR images more clearly in various sampling schemes. Compared with the existing MR image reconstruction algorithms, TFG-MRI can achieve higher accurate image reconstruction quality and better robustness to noises.

High-Precision MRI Reconstruction Algorithm for 3D Sphere Packings

Packings of granular materials are complex systems consisting of large sets of particles interacting via contact forces. Their internal structure is interesting for several theoretical and practical reasons, especially when the model system consists in a large amount (up to 105) of identical spheres. We herein present a method to process three-dimensional water density maps recorded in wet granular packings of mm-size spheres by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Packings of spheres with highly mono-dispersed diameter are considered and the implementation of an ad hoc reconstruction algorithm tailored for this feature allows for the determination of the position of each single sphere with an unprecedented precision (with respect to the scale of the system) while ensuring that all spheres are identified and no non-existing sphere is introduced in the reconstructed packing. The reconstruction of a 0.5 L sample containing about 2 × 104 spheres is presented to demonstrate the robustness of the method.

Bregman Iteration Based Efficient Algorithm for MR Image Reconstruction From Undersampled K-Space Data

It is difficult to solve Magnetic Resonance (MR) image reconstruction problems with linear combinations of total variation and ℓ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> norm regularization terms. In order to solve these compound regularization problems, we propose an efficient algorithm in this letter. The proposed algorithm adopts the Bregman iteration technique to convert the original constrained problem to a sequence of unconstrained problems, which are then solved using operator splitting and variable splitting techniques. Simulation experiments demonstrate that significant improvement of the quality of reconstructed images is achieved by the proposed algorithm when compared to previous methods.

A wavelet-based regularized reconstruction algorithm for SENSE parallel MRI with applications to neuroimaging☆

To reduce scanning time and/or improve spatial/temporal resolution in some Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) applications, parallel MRI acquisition techniques with multiple coils acquisition have emerged since the early 1990s as powerful imaging methods that allow a faster acquisition process. In these techniques, the full FOV image has to be reconstructed from the resulting acquired undersampled k-space data. To this end, several reconstruction techniques have been proposed such as the widely-used SENSitivity Encoding (SENSE) method. However, the reconstructed image generally presents artifacts when perturbations occur in both the measured data and the estimated coil sensitivity profiles. In this paper, we aim at achieving accurate image reconstruction under degraded experimental conditions (low magnetic field and high reduction factor), in which neither the SENSE method nor the Tikhonov regularization in the image domain give convincing results. To this end, we present a novel method for SENSE-based reconstruction which proceeds with regularization in the complex wavelet domain by promoting sparsity. The proposed approach relies on a fast algorithm that enables the minimization of regularized non-differentiable criteria including more general penalties than a classical ℓ(1) term. To further enhance the reconstructed image quality, local convex constraints are added to the regularization process. In vivo human brain experiments carried out on Gradient-Echo (GRE) anatomical and Echo Planar Imaging (EPI) functional MRI data at 1.5T indicate that our algorithm provides reconstructed images with reduced artifacts for high reduction factors.

An efficient algorithm for MR image reconstruction without low spatial frequencies

It is demonstrated that if the image to be reconstructed is known to have some zero-valued pixels, the dynamic ranges can be better used by disregarding the largest signals and using signal restoration methods. Low-frequency and high-frequency signals are related, using the knowledge that some pixels are zero, by a set of linear equations in which the number of equations is equal to the number of zero pixels, and the number of unknowns is equal to the number of low-frequency signal samples rejected. An improved Fourier transform (FT), magnetic resonance (MR) imaging method based on a least-square-error (LSE) technique, and an efficient algorithm for signal restoration when the low-frequency components are discarded are presented. In this method, the regions of support in both the image domain and the frequency domain can have arbitrary shapes, and all zero pixels in the image domain can be taken into account. The algorithm has been tested on simulated and experimental data with acceptable results.

Reconstruction by weighted correlation for MRI with time-varying gradients

A general reconstruction algorithm for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with gradients having arbitrary time dependence is presented. This method estimates spin density by calculating the weighted correlation of the observed free induction decay signal and the phase modulation function at each point. A theorem which states that this method can be derived from the conditions of linearity and shift invariance is presented. Since these conditions are general, most of the MRI reconstruction algorithms proposed so far are equivalent to the weighted correlation method. An explicit representation of the point spread function (PSF) in the weighted correlation method is given. By using this representation, a method to control the PSF and the static field inhomogeneity effects is studied. A correction method for the inhomogeneity is proposed, and a limitation is clarified. Some simulation results are presented.