Motion-Corrected, Super-Resolution Reconstruction for High-Resolution 3D Cardiac Cine MRI
Cardiac cine MRI with 3D isotropic resolution is challenging as it requires efficient data acquisition and motion management. It is proposed to use a 2D balanced SSFP (steady-state free precession) sequence rather than its 3D version as it provides better
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U947, Inserm, Nancy, France IADI, Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France 3 CIC-IT 1433, Inserm, Nancy, France 4 Computer Science, Technische Universitat Munchen, Munich, Germany 5 GE Global Research Center, Garching, Germany 2
Abstract. Cardiac cine MRI with 3D isotropic resolution is challenging as it requires efficient data acquisition and motion management. It is proposed to use a 2D balanced SSFP (steady-state free precession) sequence rather than its 3D version as it provides better contrast between blood and tissue. In order to obtain 3D isotropic images, 2D multi-slice datasets are acquired in different orientations (short axis, horizontal long axis and vertical long axis) while the patient is breathing freely. Image reconstruction is performed in two steps: (i) a motioncompensated reconstruction of each image stack corrects for nonrigid cardiac and respiratory motion; (ii) a super-resolution (SR) algorithm combines the three motion-corrected volumes (with low resolution in the slice direction) into a single volume with isotropic resolution. The SR reconstruction was implemented with two regularization schemes including a conventional one (Tikhonov) and a feature-preserving one (Beltrami). The method was validated in 8 volunteers and 10 patients with breathing difficulties. Image sharpness, as assessed by intensity profiles and by objective metrics based on the structure tensor, was improved with both SR techniques. The Beltrami constraint provided efficient denoising without altering the effective resolution. Keywords: Magnetic resonance imaging, super-resolution, motion-compensated reconstruction.
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Introduction
High-resolution, 3D isotropic cine imaging of the heart is challenging because it requires lengthy acquisitions, even with efficient imaging sequences, and therefore advanced patient motion management. Such an imaging technique would be useful for understanding complex anatomy and function in congenital heart diseases or for imaging small cardiac structures such as the atrium or the valves. It might also help reducing the variability of ventricular volumetric assessment in cardiovascular diseases (stroke volume, ejection fraction…) which is generally high with the conventional 2D cine image stacks due to the difficulty of segmenting the myocardium near the base of the ventricles. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 N. Navab et al. (Eds.): MICCAI 2015, Part III, LNCS 9351, pp. 435–442, 2015. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-24574-4_52
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The b-SSFP (balanced steady-state free precession) sequence is one of the most widely used imaging techniques for cardiac cine imaging. This is because it provides the highest signal-to-noise ratio per unit time among all known sequence, with good T2/T1 contrast [1]. Moreover when the slice thickness is not too small (5 to 10 mm) the 2D b-SSFP does not suffer from severe motion-induced signal dropouts thanks to its fully balanced gradients. Unlike its 3D version, the 2D b-SSFP provides excellent contrast between tissues and blood/vessel
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