Abstract
Diffusion-weighted MRI images acquired with multiple b-values have the potential to improve diagnostic accuracy by increasing the conspicuity of lesions and inflammatory activity with background suppression. Unfortunately, the inherently low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of DW-MRI reduces enthusiasm for using these images for diagnostic purposes. Moreover, lengthy acquisition times limit our ability to improve the quality of multi b-value DW-MRI images by multiple excitations acquisition and signal averaging at each b-value. To offset these limitations, we propose the Simultaneous Model Estimation and Image Reconstruction (SMEIR) for DW-MRI, which substantially improves the quality of multi b-value DW-MRI images without increasing acquisition times. Our model introduces the physiological signal decay model of DW-MRI as a constraint in the reconstruction of the DW-MRI images. An in-vivo experiment using 6 low-quality DW-MRI datasets of a healthy subject showed that SMEIR reconstruction of low-quality data improved SNR by 55% in the liver and by 41% in the kidney without increasing acquisition times. We also demonstrated the clinical impact of our SMEIR reconstruction by increasing the conspicuity of inflamed bowel regions in DW-MRI of 12 patients with Crohn’s disease. The contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of the inflamed regions in the SMEIR images was higher by 12.6% relative to CNR in the original DW-MRI images.
This investigation is supported in part by NIH grants R01 LM010033 R42 MH086984 R01 EB008015 UL1 TR000170 and by research grants from the Translational Research Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. M.F is also supported in part by a Research Fellow Award from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.
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Keywords
- Focal Hepatic Lesion
- Intravoxel Incoherent Motion
- Multiple Excitation
- Increase Acquisition Time
- Bowel Region
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Freiman, M., Afacan, O., Mulkern, R.V., Warfield, S.K. (2013). Improved Multi B-Value Diffusion-Weighted MRI of the Body by Simultaneous Model Estimation and Image Reconstruction (SMEIR). In: Mori, K., Sakuma, I., Sato, Y., Barillot, C., Navab, N. (eds) Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2013. MICCAI 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8151. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40760-4_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40760-4_1
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