Accelerating Magnetic Resonance Parametric Mapping Using Simultaneously Spatial Patch-based and Parametric Group-based Low-rank Tensors (SMART)

Quantitative magnetic resonance (MR) parametric mapping is a promising approach for characterizing intrinsic tissue-dependent information. However, long scan time significantly hinders its widespread applications. Recently, low-rank tensor has been employed and demonstrated good performance in accelerating MR parametricmapping. In this study, we propose a novel method that uses spatial patch-based and parametric group-based low rank tensors simultaneously (SMART) to reconstruct images from highly undersampled k-space data. The spatial patch-based low-rank tensor exploits the high local and nonlocal redundancies and similarities between the contrast images in parametric mapping. The parametric group based low-rank tensor, which integrates similar exponential behavior of the image signals, is jointly used to enforce the multidimensional low-rankness in the reconstruction process. In vivo brain datasets were used to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed method achieves 11.7-fold and 13.21-fold accelerations in two-dimensional and three-dimensional acquisitions, respectively, with more accurate reconstructed images and maps than several state-of-the-art methods. Prospective reconstruction results further demonstrate the capability of the SMART method in accelerating MR quantitative imaging.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure

Magnetic resonance multitasking for motion-resolved quantitative cardiovascular imaging.

Quantitative cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging can be used to characterize fibrosis, oedema, ischaemia, inflammation and other disease conditions. However, the need to reduce artefacts arising from body motion through a combination of electrocardiography (ECG) control, respiration control, and contrast-weighting selection makes CMR exams lengthy. Here, we show that physiological motions and other dynamic processes can be conceptualized as multiple time dimensions that can be resolved via low-rank tensor imaging, allowing for motion-resolved quantitative imaging with up to four time dimensions. This continuous-acquisition approach, which we name cardiovascular MR multitasking, captures - rather than avoids - motion, relaxation and other dynamics to efficiently perform quantitative CMR without the use of ECG triggering or breath holds. We demonstrate that CMR multitasking allows for T1 mapping, T1-T2 mapping and time-resolved T1 mapping of myocardial perfusion without ECG information and/or in free-breathing conditions. CMR multitasking may provide a foundation for the development of setup-free CMR imaging for the quantitative evaluation of cardiovascular health

Low-rank Tensor Assisted K-space Generative Model for Parallel Imaging Reconstruction

Although recent deep learning methods, especially generative models, have shown good performance in fast magnetic resonance imaging, there is still much room for improvement in high-dimensional generation. Considering that internal dimensions in score-based generative models have a critical impact on estimating the gradient of the data distribution, we present a new idea, low-rank tensor assisted k-space generative model (LR-KGM), for parallel imaging reconstruction. This means that we transform original prior information into high-dimensional prior information for learning. More specifically, the multi-channel data is constructed into a large Hankel matrix and the matrix is subsequently folded into tensor for prior learning. In the testing phase, the low-rank rotation strategy is utilized to impose low-rank constraints on tensor output of the generative network. Furthermore, we alternately use traditional generative iterations and low-rank high-dimensional tensor iterations for reconstruction. Experimental comparisons with the state-of-the-arts demonstrated that the proposed LR-KGM method achieved better performance