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Tang X, Gao J, Aburas A, Wu D, Chen Z, Chen H, Hu C. Accelerated multi-b-value multi-shot diffusion-weighted imaging based on EPI with keyhole and a low-rank tensor constraint. Magn Reson Imaging 2024; 110:138-148. [PMID: 38641211 DOI: 10.1016/j.mri.2024.04.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/02/2024] [Revised: 04/08/2024] [Accepted: 04/10/2024] [Indexed: 04/21/2024]
Abstract
PURPOSE Multi-Shot (MS) Echo-Planar Imaging (EPI) may improve the in-plane resolution of multi-b-value DWI, yet it also considerably increases the scan time. Here we explored the combination of EPI with Keyhole (EPIK) and a calibrationless reconstruction algorithm for acceleration of multi-b-value MS-DWI. METHODS We firstly analyzed the impact of nonuniform phase accrual in EPIK on the reconstructed image. Based on insights gained from the analysis, we developed a calibrationless reconstruction algorithm based on a Space-Contrast-Coil Locally Low-Rank Tensor (SCC-LLRT) constraint for reconstruction of EPIK-acquired data. We compared the algorithm with a modified SPatial-Angular Locally Low-Rank (SPA-LLR) algorithm through simulations, phantoms, and in vivo study. We then compared EPIK with uniformly undersampled EPI for accelerating multi-b-value DWI in 6 healthy subjects. RESULTS Through theoretical derivations, we found that the reconstruction of EPIK with a SENSE-encoding-based algorithm, such as SPA-LLR, may cause additional aliasing artifacts due to the frequency-dependent distortion of the coil sensitivity. Results from simulations, phantoms, and in vivo study verified the theoretical finding by showing that the calibrationless SCC-LLRT algorithm reduced aliasing artifacts compared with SPA-LLR. Finally, EPIK with SCC-LLRT substantially reduced the ghosting artifacts compared with uniform undersampled multi-b-value DWI, decreasing the fitting errors in ADC (0.05 ± 0.01 vs 0.10 ± 0.01, P < 0.001) and IVIM mapping (0.026 ± 0.004 vs 0.06 ± 0.006, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION The SCC-LLRT algorithm reduced the aliasing artifacts of EPIK by using a calibrationless modeling of the multi-coil data. The dense sampling of k-space center offers EPIK a potential to improve image quality for acceleration of multi-b-value MS-DWI.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xin Tang
- National Engineering Research Center of Advanced Magnetic Resonance Technologies for Diagnosis and Therapy, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; United Imaging Healthcare Co. Ltd, Shanghai, China
| | - Juan Gao
- National Engineering Research Center of Advanced Magnetic Resonance Technologies for Diagnosis and Therapy, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
| | - Ahmed Aburas
- National Engineering Research Center of Advanced Magnetic Resonance Technologies for Diagnosis and Therapy, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
| | - Dan Wu
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Biomedical Engineering & Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
| | - Zhuo Chen
- National Engineering Research Center of Advanced Magnetic Resonance Technologies for Diagnosis and Therapy, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
| | - Hao Chen
- National Engineering Research Center of Advanced Magnetic Resonance Technologies for Diagnosis and Therapy, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
| | - Chenxi Hu
- National Engineering Research Center of Advanced Magnetic Resonance Technologies for Diagnosis and Therapy, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
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Meyer NK, In MH, Black DF, Campeau NG, Welker KM, Huston J, Halverson MA, Bernstein MA, Trzasko JD. Model-based iterative reconstruction for direct imaging with point spread function encoded echo planar MRI. Magn Reson Imaging 2024; 109:189-202. [PMID: 38490504 PMCID: PMC11075760 DOI: 10.1016/j.mri.2024.03.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2023] [Revised: 03/08/2024] [Accepted: 03/08/2024] [Indexed: 03/17/2024]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Echo planar imaging (EPI) is a fast measurement technique commonly used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), but is highly sensitive to measurement non-idealities in reconstruction. Point spread function (PSF)-encoded EPI is a multi-shot strategy which alleviates distortion, but acquisition of encodings suitable for direct distortion-free imaging prolongs scan time. In this work, a model-based iterative reconstruction (MBIR) framework is introduced for direct imaging with PSF-EPI to improve image quality and acceleration potential. METHODS An MBIR platform was developed for accelerated PSF-EPI. The reconstruction utilizes a subspace representation, is regularized to promote local low-rankedness (LLR), and uses variable splitting for efficient iteration. Comparisons were made against standard reconstructions from prospectively accelerated PSF-EPI data and with retrospective subsampling. Exploring aggressive partial Fourier acceleration of the PSF-encoding dimension, additional comparisons were made against an extension of Homodyne to direct PSF-EPI in numerical experiments. A neuroradiologists' assessment was completed comparing images reconstructed with MBIR from retrospectively truncated data directly against images obtained with standard reconstructions from non-truncated datasets. RESULTS Image quality results were consistently superior for MBIR relative to standard and Homodyne reconstructions. As the MBIR signal model and reconstruction allow for arbitrary sampling of the PSF space, random sampling of the PSF-encoding dimension was also demonstrated, with quantitative assessments indicating best performance achieved through nonuniform PSF sampling combined with partial Fourier. With retrospective subsampling, MBIR reconstructs high-quality images from sub-minute scan datasets. MBIR was shown to be superior in a neuroradiologists' assessment with respect to three of five performance criteria, with equivalence for the remaining two. CONCLUSIONS A novel image reconstruction framework is introduced for direct imaging with PSF-EPI, enabling arbitrary PSF space sampling and reconstruction of diagnostic-quality images from highly accelerated PSF-encoded EPI data.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nolan K Meyer
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Myung-Ho In
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - David F Black
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Norbert G Campeau
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Kirk M Welker
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - John Huston
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Maria A Halverson
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Matt A Bernstein
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA
| | - Joshua D Trzasko
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA.
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Yarach U, Chatnuntawech I, Setsompop K, Suwannasak A, Angkurawaranon S, Madla C, Hanprasertpong C, Sangpin P. Improved reconstruction for highly accelerated propeller diffusion 1.5 T clinical MRI. MAGMA (NEW YORK, N.Y.) 2024; 37:283-294. [PMID: 38386154 DOI: 10.1007/s10334-023-01142-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/11/2023] [Revised: 12/11/2023] [Accepted: 12/13/2023] [Indexed: 02/23/2024]
Abstract
PURPOSE Propeller fast-spin-echo diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (FSE-dMRI) is essential for the diagnosis of Cholesteatoma. However, at clinical 1.5 T MRI, its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) remains relatively low. To gain sufficient SNR, signal averaging (number of excitations, NEX) is usually used with the cost of prolonged scan time. In this work, we leveraged the benefits of Locally Low Rank (LLR) constrained reconstruction to enhance the SNR. Furthermore, we enhanced both the speed and SNR by employing Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for the accelerated PROPELLER FSE-dMRI on a 1.5 T clinical scanner. METHODS Residual U-Net (RU-Net) was found to be efficient for propeller FSE-dMRI data. It was trained to predict 2-NEX images obtained by Locally Low Rank (LLR) constrained reconstruction and used 1-NEX images obtained via simplified reconstruction as the inputs. The brain scans from healthy volunteers and patients with cholesteatoma were performed for model training and testing. The performance of trained networks was evaluated with normalized root-mean-square-error (NRMSE), structural similarity index measure (SSIM), and peak SNR (PSNR). RESULTS For 4 × under-sampled with 7 blades data, online reconstruction appears to provide suboptimal images-some small details are missing due to high noise interferences. Offline LLR enables suppression of noises and discovering some small structures. RU-Net demonstrated further improvement compared to LLR by increasing 18.87% of PSNR, 2.11% of SSIM, and reducing 53.84% of NRMSE. Moreover, RU-Net is about 1500 × faster than LLR (0.03 vs. 47.59 s/slice). CONCLUSION The LLR remarkably enhances the SNR compared to online reconstruction. Moreover, RU-Net improves propeller FSE-dMRI as reflected in PSNR, SSIM, and NRMSE. It requires only 1-NEX data, which allows a 2 × scan time reduction. In addition, its speed is approximately 1500 times faster than that of LLR-constrained reconstruction.
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Affiliation(s)
- Uten Yarach
- Department of Radiologic Technology, Faculty of Associated Medical Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.
| | - Itthi Chatnuntawech
- National Nanotechnology Center, National Science and Technology Development Agency, Pathum Thani, Thailand
| | - Kawin Setsompop
- Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - Atita Suwannasak
- Department of Radiologic Technology, Faculty of Associated Medical Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
| | - Salita Angkurawaranon
- Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
| | - Chakri Madla
- Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
| | - Charuk Hanprasertpong
- Department of Otolaryngology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
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Alus O, El Homsi M, Golia Pernicka JS, Rodriguez L, Mazaheri Y, Kee Y, Petkovska I, Otazo R. Convolutional network denoising for acceleration of multi-shot diffusion MRI. Magn Reson Imaging 2024; 105:108-113. [PMID: 37820978 PMCID: PMC11138874 DOI: 10.1016/j.mri.2023.10.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/11/2023] [Revised: 08/04/2023] [Accepted: 10/07/2023] [Indexed: 10/13/2023]
Abstract
Multi-shot echo planar imaging is a promising technique to reduce geometric distortions and increase spatial resolution in diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI), at the expense of increased scan time. Moreover, performing DWI in the body requires multiple repetitions to obtain sufficient signal-to-noise ratio, which further increases the scan time. This work proposes to reduce the number of repetitions and perform denoising of high b-value images using a convolutional network denoising trained on single-shot DWI to accelerate the acquisition of multi-shot DWI. Convolutional network denoising is demonstrated to accelerate the acquisition of 2-shot DWI by a factor of 4 compared to the clinical standard on patients with rectal cancer. Image quality was evaluated using qualitative scores from expert body radiologists between accelerated and non-accelerated acquisition. Additionally, the effect of convolutional network denoising on each image quality score was analyzed using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Convolutional network denoising would enable to increase the number of shots without increasing scan time for significant geometric artifact reduction and spatial resolution increase.
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Affiliation(s)
- Or Alus
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA
| | - Maria El Homsi
- Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA
| | | | - Lee Rodriguez
- Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA
| | - Yousef Mazaheri
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA; Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA
| | - Youngwook Kee
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA
| | - Iva Petkovska
- Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA
| | - Ricardo Otazo
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA; Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA.
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5
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Dong Y, Koolstra K, Li Z, Riedel M, van Osch MJP, Börnert P. Structured low-rank reconstruction for navigator-free water/fat separated multi-shot diffusion-weighted EPI. Magn Reson Med 2024; 91:205-220. [PMID: 37753595 DOI: 10.1002/mrm.29848] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2023] [Revised: 07/20/2023] [Accepted: 08/11/2023] [Indexed: 09/28/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE Multi-shot diffusion-weighted EPI allows an increase in image resolution and reduced geometric distortions and can be combined with chemical-shift encoding (Dixon) to separate water/fat signals. However, such approaches suffer from physiological motion-induced shot-to-shot phase variations. In this work, a structured low-rank-based navigator-free algorithm is proposed to address the challenge of simultaneously separating water/fat signals and correcting for physiological motion-induced shot-to-shot phase variations in multi-shot EPI-based diffusion-weighted MRI. THEORY AND METHODS We propose an iterative, model-based reconstruction pipeline that applies structured low-rank regularization to estimate and eliminate the shot-to-shot phase variations in a data-driven way, while separating water/fat images. The algorithm is tested in different anatomies, including head-neck, knee, brain, and prostate. The performance is validated in simulations and in-vivo experiments in comparison to existing approaches. RESULTS In-vivo experiments and simulations demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm compared to extra-navigated and an alternative self-navigation approach. The proposed algorithm demonstrates the capability to reconstruct in the multi-shot/Dixon hybrid space domain under-sampled datasets, using the same number of acquired EPI shots compared to conventional fat-suppression techniques but eliminating fat signals through chemical-shift encoding. In addition, partial Fourier reconstruction can also be achieved by using the concept of virtual conjugate coils in conjunction with the proposed algorithm. CONCLUSION The proposed algorithm effectively eliminates the shot-to-shot phase variations and separates water/fat images, making it a promising solution for future DWI on different anatomies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yiming Dong
- C.J. Gorter MRI Center, Department of Radiology, LUMC, Leiden, The Netherlands
| | | | - Ziyu Li
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | | | | | - Peter Börnert
- C.J. Gorter MRI Center, Department of Radiology, LUMC, Leiden, The Netherlands
- Philips Research Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
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6
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Li Z, Fan Q, Bilgic B, Wang G, Wu W, Polimeni JR, Miller KL, Huang SY, Tian Q. Diffusion MRI data analysis assisted by deep learning synthesized anatomical images (DeepAnat). Med Image Anal 2023; 86:102744. [PMID: 36867912 PMCID: PMC10517382 DOI: 10.1016/j.media.2023.102744] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/01/2022] [Revised: 12/25/2022] [Accepted: 01/05/2023] [Indexed: 01/20/2023]
Abstract
Diffusion MRI is a useful neuroimaging tool for non-invasive mapping of human brain microstructure and structural connections. The analysis of diffusion MRI data often requires brain segmentation, including volumetric segmentation and cerebral cortical surfaces, from additional high-resolution T1-weighted (T1w) anatomical MRI data, which may be unacquired, corrupted by subject motion or hardware failure, or cannot be accurately co-registered to the diffusion data that are not corrected for susceptibility-induced geometric distortion. To address these challenges, this study proposes to synthesize high-quality T1w anatomical images directly from diffusion data using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) (entitled "DeepAnat"), including a U-Net and a hybrid generative adversarial network (GAN), and perform brain segmentation on synthesized T1w images or assist the co-registration using synthesized T1w images. The quantitative and systematic evaluations using data of 60 young subjects provided by the Human Connectome Project (HCP) show that the synthesized T1w images and results for brain segmentation and comprehensive diffusion analysis tasks are highly similar to those from native T1w data. The brain segmentation accuracy is slightly higher for the U-Net than the GAN. The efficacy of DeepAnat is further validated on a larger dataset of 300 more elderly subjects provided by the UK Biobank. Moreover, the U-Nets trained and validated on the HCP and UK Biobank data are shown to be highly generalizable to the diffusion data from Massachusetts General Hospital Connectome Diffusion Microstructure Dataset (MGH CDMD) acquired with different hardware systems and imaging protocols and therefore can be used directly without retraining or with fine-tuning for further improved performance. Finally, it is quantitatively demonstrated that the alignment between native T1w images and diffusion images uncorrected for geometric distortion assisted by synthesized T1w images substantially improves upon that by directly co-registering the diffusion and T1w images using the data of 20 subjects from MGH CDMD. In summary, our study demonstrates the benefits and practical feasibility of DeepAnat for assisting various diffusion MRI data analyses and supports its use in neuroscientific applications.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ziyu Li
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - Qiuyun Fan
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Berkin Bilgic
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Guangzhi Wang
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
| | - Wenchuan Wu
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - Jonathan R Polimeni
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Karla L Miller
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - Susie Y Huang
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Qiyuan Tian
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
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Tan Z, Unterberg-Buchwald C, Blumenthal M, Scholand N, Schaten P, Holme C, Wang X, Raddatz D, Uecker M. Free-Breathing Liver Fat, R₂* and B₀ Field Mapping Using Multi-Echo Radial FLASH and Regularized Model-Based Reconstruction. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2023; 42:1374-1387. [PMID: 37015368 PMCID: PMC10368089 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2022.3228075] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/04/2023]
Abstract
This work introduced a stack-of-radial multi-echo asymmetric-echo MRI sequence for free-breathing liver volumetric acquisition. Regularized model-based reconstruction was implemented in Berkeley Advanced Reconstruction Toolbox (BART) to jointly estimate all physical parameter maps (water, fat, R2∗ , and B0 field inhomogeneity maps) and coil sensitivity maps from self-gated k -space data. Specifically, locally low rank and temporal total variation regularization were employed directly on physical parameter maps. The proposed free-breathing radial technique was tested on a water/fat & iron phantom, a young volunteer, and obesity/diabetes/hepatic steatosis patients. Quantitative fat fraction and R2∗ accuracy were confirmed by comparing our technique with the reference breath-hold Cartesian scan. The multi-echo radial sampling sequence achieves fast k -space coverage and is robust to motion. Moreover, the proposed motion-resolved model-based reconstruction allows for free-breathing liver fat and R2∗ quantification in multiple motion states. Overall, our proposed technique offers a convenient tool for non-invasive liver assessment with no breath holding requirement.
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Ramos-Llordén G, Lobos RA, Kim TH, Tian Q, Witzel T, Lee HH, Scholz A, Keil B, Yendiki A, Bilgiç B, Haldar JP, Huang SY. High-fidelity, high-spatial-resolution diffusion magnetic resonance imaging of ex vivo whole human brain at ultra-high gradient strength with structured low-rank echo-planar imaging ghost correction. NMR IN BIOMEDICINE 2023; 36:e4831. [PMID: 36106429 PMCID: PMC9883835 DOI: 10.1002/nbm.4831] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/08/2022] [Revised: 08/20/2022] [Accepted: 09/11/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) of whole ex vivo human brain specimens enables three-dimensional (3D) mapping of structural connectivity at the mesoscopic scale, providing detailed evaluation of fiber architecture and tissue microstructure at a spatial resolution that is difficult to access in vivo. To account for the short T2 and low diffusivity of fixed tissue, ex vivo dMRI is often acquired using strong diffusion-sensitizing gradients and multishot/segmented 3D echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequences to achieve high spatial resolution. However, the combination of strong diffusion-sensitizing gradients and multishot/segmented EPI readout can result in pronounced ghosting artifacts incurred by nonlinear spatiotemporal variations in the magnetic field produced by eddy currents. Such ghosting artifacts cannot be corrected with conventional correction solutions and pose a significant roadblock to leveraging human MRI scanners with ultrahigh gradients for ex vivo whole-brain dMRI. Here, we show that ghosting-correction approaches that correct for either polarity-related ghosting or shot-to-shot variations in a separate manner are suboptimal for 3D multishot diffusion-weighted EPI experiments in fixed human brain specimens using strong diffusion-sensitizing gradients on the 3-T Connectom MRI scanner, resulting in orientationally biased dMRI estimates. We apply a recently developed advanced k-space reconstruction method based on structured low-rank matrix (SLM) modeling that handles both polarity-related ghosting and shot-to-shot variation simultaneously, to mitigate artifacts in high-angular resolution multishot dMRI data acquired in several fixed human brain specimens at 0.7-0.8-mm isotropic spatial resolution using b-values up to 10,000 s/mm2 and gradient strengths up to 280 mT/m. We demonstrate the improved mapping of diffusion tensor imaging and fiber orientation distribution functions in key neuroanatomical areas distributed across the whole brain using SLM-based EPI ghost correction compared with alternative techniques.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gabriel Ramos-Llordén
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Rodrigo A. Lobos
- Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA
| | - Tae Hyung Kim
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Computer Engineering, Hongik University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Qiyuan Tian
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | | | - Hong-Hsi Lee
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Alina Scholz
- Institute of Medical Physics and Radiation Protection, Mittelhessen University of Applied Sciences, Giessen, Germany
| | - Boris Keil
- Institute of Medical Physics and Radiation Protection, Mittelhessen University of Applied Sciences, Giessen, Germany
- Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital Marburg, Philipps University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany
| | - Anastasia Yendiki
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Berkin Bilgiç
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Justin P. Haldar
- Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA
| | - Susie Y. Huang
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA
- Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
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9
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Chen H, Dai K, Zhong S, Zheng J, Zhang X, Yang S, Cao T, Wang C, Karasan E, Frydman L, Zhang Z. High-resolution multi-shot diffusion-weighted MRI combining markerless prospective motion correction and locally low-rank constrained reconstruction. Magn Reson Med 2023; 89:605-619. [PMID: 36198013 DOI: 10.1002/mrm.29468] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/10/2022] [Revised: 08/10/2022] [Accepted: 09/04/2022] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
PURPOSE Subject head motion is a major challenge in DWI, leading to image blurring, signal losses, and biases in the estimated diffusion parameters. Here, we investigate a combined application of prospective motion correction and spatial-angular locally low-rank constrained reconstruction to obtain robust, multi-shot, high-resolution diffusion-weighted MRI under substantial motion. METHODS Single-shot EPI with retrospective motion correction can mitigate motion artifacts and resolve any mismatching of gradient encoding orientations; however, it is limited by low spatial resolution and image distortions. Multi-shot acquisition strategies could achieve higher resolution and image fidelity but increase the vulnerability to motion artifacts and phase variations related to cardiac pulsations from shot to shot. We use prospective motion correction with optical markerless motion tracking to remove artifacts and reduce image blurring due to bulk motion, combined with locally low-rank regularization to correct for remaining artifacts due to shot-to-shot phase variations. RESULTS The approach was evaluated on healthy adult volunteers at 3 Tesla under different motion patterns. In multi-shot DWI, image blurring due to motion with 20 mm translations and 30° rotations was successfully removed by prospective motion correction, and aliasing artifacts caused by shot-to-shot phase variations were addressed by locally low-rank regularization. The ability of prospective motion correction to preserve the orientational information in DTI without requiring a reorientation of the b-matrix is highlighted. CONCLUSION The described technique is proved to hold valuable potential for mapping brain diffusivity and connectivity at high resolution for studies in subjects/cohorts where motion is common, including neonates, pediatrics, and patients with neurological disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hao Chen
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
| | - Ke Dai
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
| | - Sijie Zhong
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
| | - Jiaxu Zheng
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.,United Imaging Healthcare, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
| | - Xinyue Zhang
- United Imaging Healthcare, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
| | - Shasha Yang
- United Imaging Healthcare, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
| | - Tuoyu Cao
- United Imaging Healthcare, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
| | - Chaohong Wang
- United Imaging Healthcare, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
| | - Ekin Karasan
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California
| | - Lucio Frydman
- Department of Chemical and Biological Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
| | - Zhiyong Zhang
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
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Dai E, Mani M, McNab JA. Multi-band multi-shot diffusion MRI reconstruction with joint usage of structured low-rank constraints and explicit phase mapping. Magn Reson Med 2023; 89:95-111. [PMID: 36063492 PMCID: PMC9887994 DOI: 10.1002/mrm.29422] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2022] [Revised: 08/01/2022] [Accepted: 08/02/2022] [Indexed: 02/02/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE To develop a joint reconstruction method for multi-band multi-shot diffusion MRI. THEORY AND METHODS Multi-band multi-shot EPI acquisition is an effective approach for high-resolution diffusion MRI, but requires specific algorithms to correct the inter-shot phase variations. The phase correction can be done by first estimating the explicit phase map and then feeding it into the k-space signal formulation model. Alternatively, the phase information can be used indirectly as structured low-rank constraints in k-space. The 2 methods differ in reconstruction accuracy and efficiency. We aim to combine the 2 different approaches for improved image quality and reconstruction efficiency simultaneously, termed "joint usage of structured low-rank constraints and explicit phase mapping" (JULEP). The proposed JULEP reconstruction is tested on both single-band and multi-band, multi-shot diffusion data, with different resolutions and b values. The results of JULEP are compared with conventional methods with explicit phase mapping (i.e., multiplexed sensitivity-encoding [MUSE]) and structured low-rank constraints (i.e., MUSSELS), and another joint reconstruction method (i.e., network estimated artifacts for tempered reconstruction [NEATR]). RESULTS JULEP improves the quality of the navigator and subsequently facilitates the reconstruction of final diffusion images. Compared with all 3 other methods (MUSE, MUSSELS, and NEATR), JULEP mitigates residual structural bias and improves temporal SNRs in the final diffusion image, particularly at high multi-band factors. Compared with MUSSELS, JULEP also improves computational efficiency. CONCLUSION The proposed JULEP method significantly improves the image quality and reconstruction efficiency of multi-band multi-shot diffusion MRI, which can promote a broader application of high-resolution diffusion MRI.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erpeng Dai
- Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
| | - Merry Mani
- Department of Radiology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
| | - Jennifer A McNab
- Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
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11
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Otikovs M, Basak A, Frydman L. Spatiotemporal encoding MRI using subspace-constrained sampling and locally-low-rank regularization: Applications to diffusion weighted and diffusion kurtosis imaging of human brain and prostate. Magn Reson Imaging 2022; 94:151-160. [PMID: 36216145 DOI: 10.1016/j.mri.2022.09.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/26/2022] [Revised: 09/21/2022] [Accepted: 09/28/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
The benefits of performing locally low-rank (LLR) reconstructions on subsampled diffusion weighted and diffusion kurtosis imaging data employing spatiotemporal encoding (SPEN) methods, is investigated. SPEN allows for self-referenced correction of motion-induced phase errors in case of interleaved diffusion-oriented acquisitions, and allows one to overcome distortions otherwise observed along EPI's phase-encoded dimension. In combination with LLR-based reconstructions of the pooled imaging data and with a joint subsampling of b-weighted and interleaved images, additional improvements in terms of sensitivity as well as shortened acquisition times are demonstrated, without noticeable penalties. Details on how the LLR-regularized, subspace-constrained image reconstructions were adapted to SPEN are given; the improvements introduced by adopting these reconstruction frameworks for the accelerated acquisition of diffusivity and of kurtosis imaging data in both relatively homogeneous regions like the human brain and in more challenging regions like the human prostate, are presented and discussed within the context of similar efforts in the field.
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Affiliation(s)
- Martins Otikovs
- Department of Chemical and Biological Physics and Azrieli National Center for Brain Imaging, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
| | - Ankit Basak
- Department of Chemical and Biological Physics and Azrieli National Center for Brain Imaging, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
| | - Lucio Frydman
- Department of Chemical and Biological Physics and Azrieli National Center for Brain Imaging, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
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12
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Lee PK, Hargreaves BA. A joint linear reconstruction for multishot diffusion weighted non-Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill fast spin echo with full signal. Magn Reson Med 2022; 88:2139-2156. [PMID: 35906924 PMCID: PMC9732866 DOI: 10.1002/mrm.29393] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2021] [Revised: 06/25/2022] [Accepted: 06/27/2022] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
PURPOSE Diffusion weighted Fast Spin Echo (DW-FSE) is a promising approach for distortionless DW imaging that is robust to system imperfections such as eddy currents and off-resonance. Due to non-Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) magnetization, most DW-FSE sequences discard a large fraction of the signal (2 - 2 × $$ \sqrt{2}-2\times $$ ), reducing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) efficiency compared to DW-EPI. The full FSE signal can be preserved by quadratically incrementing the transmit phase of the refocusing pulses, but this method of resolving non-CPMG magnetization has only been applied to single-shot DW-FSE due to challenges associated with image reconstruction. We present a joint linear reconstruction for multishot quadratic phase increment data that addresses these challenges and corrects ghosting from both shot-to-shot phase and intrashot signal oscillations. Multishot imaging reduces T2 blur and joint reconstruction of shots improves g-factor performance. A thorough analysis on the condition number of the proposed linear system is described. METHODS A joint multishot reconstruction is derived from the non-CPMG signal model. Multishot quadratic phase increment DW-FSE was tested in a standardized diffusion phantom and compared to single-shot DW-FSE and DW-EPI in vivo in the brain, cervical spine, and prostate. The pseudo multiple replica technique was applied to generate g-factor and SNR maps. RESULTS The proposed joint shot reconstruction eliminates ghosting from shot-to-shot phase and intrashot oscillations. g-factor performance is improved compared to previously proposed reconstructions, permitting efficient multishot imaging. apparent diffusion coefficient estimates in phantom experiments and in vivo are comparable to those obtained with conventional methods. CONCLUSION Multi-shot non-CPMG DW-FSE data with full signal can be jointly reconstructed using a linear model.
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Affiliation(s)
- Philip K. Lee
- Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA
- Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA
| | - Brian A. Hargreaves
- Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA
- Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA
- Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA
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13
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Cho J, Liao C, Tian Q, Zhang Z, Xu J, Lo WC, Poser BA, Stenger VA, Stockmann J, Setsompop K, Bilgic B. Highly accelerated EPI with wave encoding and multi-shot simultaneous multislice imaging. Magn Reson Med 2022; 88:1180-1197. [PMID: 35678236 DOI: 10.1002/mrm.29291] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/12/2021] [Revised: 04/14/2022] [Accepted: 04/15/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
PURPOSE To introduce wave-encoded acquisition and reconstruction techniques for highly accelerated EPI with reduced g-factor penalty and image artifacts. THEORY AND METHODS Wave-EPI involves application of sinusoidal gradients during the EPI readout, which spreads the aliasing in all spatial directions, thereby taking better advantage of 3D coil sensitivity profiles. The amount of voxel spreading that can be achieved by the wave gradients during the short EPI readout period is constrained by the slew rate of the gradient coils and peripheral nerve stimulation monitor. We propose to use a "half-cycle" sinusoidal gradient to increase the amount of voxel spreading that can be achieved while respecting the slew and stimulation constraints. Extending wave-EPI to multi-shot acquisition minimizes geometric distortion and voxel blurring at high in-plane resolutions, while structured low-rank regularization mitigates shot-to-shot phase variations. To address gradient imperfections, we propose to use different point spread functions for the k-space lines with positive and negative polarities, which are calibrated with a FLEET-based reference scan. RESULTS Wave-EPI enabled whole-brain single-shot gradient-echo (GE) and multi-shot spin-echo (SE) EPI acquisitions at high acceleration factors at 3T and was combined with g-Slider encoding to boost the SNR level in 1 mm isotropic diffusion imaging. Relative to blipped-CAIPI, wave-EPI reduced average and maximum g-factors by up to 1.21- and 1.37-fold at Rin × Rsms = 3 × 3, respectively. CONCLUSION Wave-EPI allows highly accelerated single- and multi-shot EPI with reduced g-factor and artifacts and may facilitate clinical and neuroscientific applications of EPI by improving the spatial and temporal resolution in functional and diffusion imaging.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jaejin Cho
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.,Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Congyu Liao
- Radiological Sciences Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.,Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Qiyuan Tian
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.,Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Zijing Zhang
- State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Jinmin Xu
- State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Wei-Ching Lo
- Siemens Medical Solutions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Benedikt A Poser
- Maastricht Brain Imaging Center, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
| | - V Andrew Stenger
- MR Research Program, Department of Medicine, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
| | - Jason Stockmann
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.,Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.,Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Kawin Setsompop
- Radiological Sciences Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.,Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Berkin Bilgic
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.,Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.,Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
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14
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Tian Q, Li Z, Fan Q, Polimeni JR, Bilgic B, Salat DH, Huang SY. SDnDTI: Self-supervised deep learning-based denoising for diffusion tensor MRI. Neuroimage 2022; 253:119033. [PMID: 35240299 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119033] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/09/2021] [Revised: 02/15/2022] [Accepted: 02/21/2022] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI) is a widely adopted neuroimaging method for the in vivo mapping of brain tissue microstructure and white matter tracts. Nonetheless, the noise in the diffusion-weighted images (DWIs) decreases the accuracy and precision of DTI derived microstructural parameters and leads to prolonged acquisition time for achieving improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Deep learning-based image denoising using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) has superior performance but often requires additional high-SNR data for supervising the training of CNNs, which reduces the feasibility of supervised learning-based denoising in practice. In this work, we develop a self-supervised deep learning-based method entitled "SDnDTI" for denoising DTI data, which does not require additional high-SNR data for training. Specifically, SDnDTI divides multi-directional DTI data into many subsets of six DWI volumes and transforms DWIs from each subset to along the same diffusion-encoding directions through the diffusion tensor model, generating multiple repetitions of DWIs with identical image contrasts but different noise observations. SDnDTI removes noise by first denoising each repetition of DWIs using a deep 3-dimensional CNN with the average of all repetitions with higher SNR as the training target, following the same approach as normal supervised learning based denoising methods, and then averaging CNN-denoised images for achieving higher SNR. The denoising efficacy of SDnDTI is demonstrated in terms of the similarity of output images and resultant DTI metrics compared to the ground truth generated using substantially more DWI volumes on two datasets with different spatial resolutions, b-values and numbers of input DWI volumes provided by the Human Connectome Project (HCP) and the Lifespan HCP in Aging. The SDnDTI results preserve image sharpness and textural details and substantially improve upon those from the raw data. The results of SDnDTI are comparable to those from supervised learning-based denoising and outperform those from state-of-the-art conventional denoising algorithms including BM4D, AONLM and MPPCA. By leveraging domain knowledge of diffusion MRI physics, SDnDTI makes it easier to use CNN-based denoising methods in practice and has the potential to benefit a wider range of research and clinical applications that require accelerated DTI acquisition and high-quality DTI data for mapping of tissue microstructure, fiber tracts and structural connectivity in the living human brain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qiyuan Tian
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, United States; Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
| | - Ziyu Li
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, PR China
| | - Qiuyun Fan
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, United States; Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Jonathan R Polimeni
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, United States; Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - Berkin Bilgic
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, United States; Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - David H Salat
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, United States; Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Susie Y Huang
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, United States; Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
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15
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Dai E, Lee PK, Dong Z, Fu F, Setsompop K, McNab JA. Distortion-Free Diffusion Imaging Using Self-Navigated Cartesian Echo-Planar Time Resolved Acquisition and Joint Magnitude and Phase Constrained Reconstruction. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2022; 41:63-74. [PMID: 34383645 PMCID: PMC8799377 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2021.3104291] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/28/2023]
Abstract
Echo-planar time resolved imaging (EPTI) is an effective approach for acquiring high-quality distortion-free images with a multi-shot EPI (ms-EPI) readout. As with traditional ms-EPI acquisitions, inter-shot phase variations present a main challenge when incorporating EPTI into a diffusion-prepared pulse sequence. The aim of this study is to develop a self-navigated Cartesian EPTI-based (scEPTI) acquisition together with a magnitude and phase constrained reconstruction for distortion-free diffusion imaging. A self-navigated Cartesian EPTI-based diffusion-prepared pulse sequence is designed. The different phase components in EPTI diffusion signal are analyzed and an approach to synthesize a fully phase-matched navigator for the inter-shot phase correction is demonstrated. Lastly, EPTI contains richer magnitude and phase information than conventional ms-EPI, such as the magnitude and phase correlations along the temporal dimension. The potential of these magnitude and phase correlations to enhance the reconstruction is explored. The reconstruction results with and without phase matching and with and without phase or magnitude constraints are compared. Compared with reconstruction without phase matching, the proposed phase matching method can improve the accuracy of inter-shot phase correction and reduce signal corruption in the final diffusion images. Magnitude constraints further improve image quality by suppressing the background noise and thereby increasing SNR, while phase constraints can mitigate possible image blurring from adding magnitude constraints. The high-quality distortion-free diffusion images and simultaneous diffusion-relaxometry imaging capacity provided by the proposed EPTI design represent a highly valuable tool for both clinical and neuroscientific assessments of tissue microstructure.
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16
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Koçanaoğullari A, Ariyurek C, Afacan O, Kurugol S. Learning the Regularization in DCE-MR Image Reconstruction for Functional Imaging of Kidneys. IEEE ACCESS : PRACTICAL INNOVATIONS, OPEN SOLUTIONS 2021; 10:4102-4111. [PMID: 35929000 PMCID: PMC9348606 DOI: 10.1109/access.2021.3139854] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/01/2023]
Abstract
Kidney DCE-MRI aims at both qualitative assessment of kidney anatomy and quantitative assessment of kidney function by estimating the tracer kinetic (TK) model parameters. Accurate estimation of TK model parameters requires an accurate measurement of the arterial input function (AIF) with high temporal resolution. Accelerated imaging is used to achieve high temporal resolution, which yields under-sampling artifacts in the reconstructed images. Compressed sensing (CS) methods offer a variety of reconstruction options. Most commonly, sparsity of temporal differences is encouraged for regularization to reduce artifacts. Increasing regularization in CS methods removes the ambient artifacts but also over-smooths the signal temporally which reduces the parameter estimation accuracy. In this work, we propose a single image trained deep neural network to reduce MRI under-sampling artifacts without reducing the accuracy of functional imaging markers. Instead of regularizing with a penalty term in optimization, we promote regularization by generating images from a lower dimensional representation. In this manuscript we motivate and explain the lower dimensional input design. We compare our approach to CS reconstructions with multiple regularization weights. Proposed approach results in kidney biomarkers that are highly correlated with the ground truth markers estimated using the CS reconstruction which was optimized for functional analysis. At the same time, the proposed approach reduces the artifacts in the reconstructed images.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aziz Koçanaoğullari
- Quantitative Intelligent Imaging Research Group (QUIN), Department of Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Cemre Ariyurek
- Quantitative Intelligent Imaging Research Group (QUIN), Department of Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Onur Afacan
- Quantitative Intelligent Imaging Research Group (QUIN), Department of Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Sila Kurugol
- Quantitative Intelligent Imaging Research Group (QUIN), Department of Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
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17
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Riedel Né Steinhoff M, Setsompop K, Mertins A, Börnert P. Segmented simultaneous multi-slice diffusion-weighted imaging with navigated 3D rigid motion correction. Magn Reson Med 2021; 86:1701-1717. [PMID: 33955588 DOI: 10.1002/mrm.28813] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/02/2020] [Revised: 03/29/2021] [Accepted: 03/29/2021] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
PURPOSE To improve the robustness of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) data acquired with segmented simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) echo-planar imaging (EPI) against in-plane and through-plane rigid motion. THEORY AND METHODS The proposed algorithm incorporates a 3D rigid motion correction and wavelet denoising into the image reconstruction of segmented SMS-EPI diffusion data. Low-resolution navigators are used to estimate shot-specific diffusion phase corruptions and 3D rigid motion parameters through SMS-to-volume registration. The shot-wise rigid motion and phase parameters are integrated into a SENSE-based full-volume reconstruction for each diffusion direction. The algorithm is compared to a navigated SMS reconstruction without gross motion correction in simulations and in vivo studies with four-fold interleaved 3-SMS diffusion tensor acquisitions. RESULTS Simulations demonstrate high fidelity was achieved in the SMS-to-volume registration, with submillimeter registration errors and improved image reconstruction quality. In vivo experiments validate successful artifact reduction in 3D motion-compromised in vivo scans with a temporal motion resolution of approximately 0.3 s. CONCLUSION This work demonstrates the feasibility of retrospective 3D rigid motion correction from shot navigators for segmented SMS DWI.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Kawin Setsompop
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA.,Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.,Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Alfred Mertins
- Institute for Signal Processing, University of Luebeck, Luebeck, Germany
| | - Peter Börnert
- Philips Research, Hamburg, Germany.,Radiology, C.J. Gorter Center for High-Field MRI, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands
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18
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Ramos-Llordén G, Vegas-Sánchez-Ferrero G, Liao C, Westin CF, Setsompop K, Rathi Y. SNR-enhanced diffusion MRI with structure-preserving low-rank denoising in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. Magn Reson Med 2021; 86:1614-1632. [PMID: 33834546 PMCID: PMC8497014 DOI: 10.1002/mrm.28752] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/11/2020] [Revised: 01/12/2021] [Accepted: 02/07/2021] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
PURPOSE To introduce, develop, and evaluate a novel denoising technique for diffusion MRI that leverages nonlinear redundancy in the data to boost the SNR while preserving signal information. METHODS We exploit nonlinear redundancy of the dMRI data by means of kernel principal component analysis (KPCA), a nonlinear generalization of PCA to reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. By mapping the signal to a high-dimensional space, a higher level of redundant information is exploited, thereby enabling better denoising than linear PCA. We implement KPCA with a Gaussian kernel, with parameters automatically selected from knowledge of the noise statistics, and validate it on realistic Monte Carlo simulations as well as with in vivo human brain submillimeter and low-resolution dMRI data. We also demonstrate KPCA denoising on multi-coil dMRI data. RESULTS SNR improvements up to 2.7 × were obtained in real in vivo datasets denoised with KPCA, in comparison to SNR gains of up to 1.8 × using a linear PCA denoising technique called Marchenko-Pastur PCA (MPPCA). Compared to gold-standard dataset references created from averaged data, we showed that lower normalized root mean squared error was achieved with KPCA compared to MPPCA. Statistical analysis of residuals shows that anatomical information is preserved and only noise is removed. Improvements in the estimation of diffusion model parameters such as fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, and fiber orientation distribution functions were also demonstrated. CONCLUSION Nonlinear redundancy of the dMRI signal can be exploited with KPCA, which allows superior noise reduction/SNR improvements than the MPPCA method, without loss of signal information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gabriel Ramos-Llordén
- Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | | | - Congyu Liao
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Carl-Fredrik Westin
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Kawin Setsompop
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Yogesh Rathi
- Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.,Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
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Tian Q, Zaretskaya N, Fan Q, Ngamsombat C, Bilgic B, Polimeni JR, Huang SY. Improved cortical surface reconstruction using sub-millimeter resolution MPRAGE by image denoising. Neuroimage 2021; 233:117946. [PMID: 33711484 PMCID: PMC8421085 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.117946] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/17/2020] [Revised: 02/28/2021] [Accepted: 03/03/2021] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Automatic cerebral cortical surface reconstruction is a useful tool for cortical anatomy quantification, analysis and visualization. Recently, the Human Connectome Project and several studies have shown the advantages of using T1-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) images with sub-millimeter isotropic spatial resolution instead of the standard 1-mm isotropic resolution for improved accuracy of cortical surface positioning and thickness estimation. Nonetheless, sub-millimeter resolution images are noisy by nature and require averaging multiple repetitions to increase the signal-to-noise ratio for precisely delineating the cortical boundary. The prolonged acquisition time and potential motion artifacts pose significant barriers to the wide adoption of cortical surface reconstruction at sub-millimeter resolution for a broad range of neuroscientific and clinical applications. We address this challenge by evaluating the cortical surface reconstruction resulting from denoised single-repetition sub-millimeter T1-weighted images. We systematically characterized the effects of image denoising on empirical data acquired at 0.6 mm isotropic resolution using three classical denoising methods, including denoising convolutional neural network (DnCNN), block-matching and 4-dimensional filtering (BM4D) and adaptive optimized non-local means (AONLM). The denoised single-repetition images were found to be highly similar to 6-repetition averaged images, with a low whole-brain averaged mean absolute difference of ~0.016, high whole-brain averaged peak signal-to-noise ratio of ~33.5 dB and structural similarity index of ~0.92, and minimal gray matter–white matter contrast loss (2% to 9%). The whole-brain mean absolute discrepancies in gray matter–white matter surface placement, gray matter–cerebrospinal fluid surface placement and cortical thickness estimation were lower than 165 μm, 155 μm and 145 μm—sufficiently accurate for most applications. These discrepancies were approximately one third to half of those from 1-mm isotropic resolution data. The denoising performance was equivalent to averaging ~2.5 repetitions of the data in terms of image similarity, and 1.6–2.2 repetitions in terms of the cortical surface placement accuracy. The scan-rescan variability of the cortical surface positioning and thickness estimation was lower than 170 μm. Our unique dataset and systematic characterization support the use of denoising methods for improved cortical surface reconstruction at sub-millimeter resolution.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qiyuan Tian
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
| | - Natalia Zaretskaya
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria; BioTechMed-Graz, Austria
| | - Qiuyun Fan
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Chanon Ngamsombat
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Thailand
| | - Berkin Bilgic
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - Jonathan R Polimeni
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - Susie Y Huang
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
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Hu Y, Xu Y, Tian Q, Chen F, Shi X, Moran CJ, Daniel BL, Hargreaves BA. RUN-UP: Accelerated multishot diffusion-weighted MRI reconstruction using an unrolled network with U-Net as priors. Magn Reson Med 2021; 85:709-720. [PMID: 32783339 PMCID: PMC8095163 DOI: 10.1002/mrm.28446] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/27/2020] [Revised: 06/17/2020] [Accepted: 07/06/2020] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
PURPOSE To accelerate and improve multishot diffusion-weighted MRI reconstruction using deep learning. METHODS An unrolled pipeline containing recurrences of model-based gradient updates and neural networks was introduced for accelerating multishot DWI reconstruction with shot-to-shot phase correction. The network was trained to predict results of jointly reconstructed multidirection data using single-direction data as input. In vivo brain and breast experiments were performed for evaluation. RESULTS The proposed method achieves a reconstruction time of 0.1 second per image, over 100-fold faster than a shot locally low-rank reconstruction. The resultant image quality is comparable to the target from the joint reconstruction with a peak signal-to-noise ratio of 35.3 dB, a normalized root-mean-square error of 0.0177, and a structural similarity index of 0.944. The proposed method also improves upon the locally low-rank reconstruction (2.9 dB higher peak signal-to-noise ratio, 29% lower normalized root-mean-square error, and 0.037 higher structural similarity index). With training data from the brain, this method also generalizes well to breast diffusion-weighted imaging, and fine-tuning further reduces aliasing artifacts. CONCLUSION A proposed data-driven approach enables almost real-time reconstruction with improved image quality, which improves the feasibility of multishot DWI in a wide range of clinical and neuroscientific studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuxin Hu
- Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Yunyingying Xu
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Qiyuan Tian
- Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Feiyu Chen
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Xinwei Shi
- Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | | | - Bruce L. Daniel
- Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
- Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Brian A. Hargreaves
- Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
- Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
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Tian Q, Bilgic B, Fan Q, Liao C, Ngamsombat C, Hu Y, Witzel T, Setsompop K, Polimeni JR, Huang SY. DeepDTI: High-fidelity six-direction diffusion tensor imaging using deep learning. Neuroimage 2020; 219:117017. [PMID: 32504817 PMCID: PMC7646449 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 45] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/19/2020] [Revised: 05/15/2020] [Accepted: 06/02/2020] [Indexed: 12/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI) is unsurpassed in its ability to map tissue microstructure and structural connectivity in the living human brain. Nonetheless, the angular sampling requirement for DTI leads to long scan times and poses a critical barrier to performing high-quality DTI in routine clinical practice and large-scale research studies. In this work we present a new processing framework for DTI entitled DeepDTI that minimizes the data requirement of DTI to six diffusion-weighted images (DWIs) required by conventional voxel-wise fitting methods for deriving the six unique unknowns in a diffusion tensor using data-driven supervised deep learning. DeepDTI maps the input non-diffusion-weighted (b = 0) image and six DWI volumes sampled along optimized diffusion-encoding directions, along with T1-weighted and T2-weighted image volumes, to the residuals between the input and high-quality output b = 0 image and DWI volumes using a 10-layer three-dimensional convolutional neural network (CNN). The inputs and outputs of DeepDTI are uniquely formulated, which not only enables residual learning to boost CNN performance but also enables tensor fitting of resultant high-quality DWIs to generate orientational DTI metrics for tractography. The very deep CNN used by DeepDTI leverages the redundancy in local and non-local spatial information and across diffusion-encoding directions and image contrasts in the data. The performance of DeepDTI was systematically quantified in terms of the quality of the output images, DTI metrics, DTI-based tractography and tract-specific analysis results. We demonstrate rotationally-invariant and robust estimation of DTI metrics from DeepDTI that are comparable to those obtained with two b = 0 images and 21 DWIs for the primary eigenvector derived from DTI and two b = 0 images and 26-30 DWIs for various scalar metrics derived from DTI, achieving 3.3-4.6 × acceleration, and twice as good as those of a state-of-the-art denoising algorithm at the group level. The twenty major white-matter tracts can be accurately identified from the tractography of DeepDTI results. The mean distance between the core of the major white-matter tracts identified from DeepDTI results and those from the ground-truth results using 18 b = 0 images and 90 DWIs measures around 1-1.5 mm. DeepDTI leverages domain knowledge of diffusion MRI physics and power of deep learning to render DTI, DTI-based tractography, major white-matter tracts identification and tract-specific analysis more feasible for a wider range of neuroscientific and clinical studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qiyuan Tian
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
| | - Berkin Bilgic
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - Qiuyun Fan
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Congyu Liao
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Chanon Ngamsombat
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Thailand
| | - Yuxin Hu
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
| | - Thomas Witzel
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Kawin Setsompop
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - Jonathan R Polimeni
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | - Susie Y Huang
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
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