High-Fidelity Accelerated MRI Reconstruction by Scan-Specific Fine-Tuning of Physics-Based Neural Networks

Long scan duration remains a challenge for high-resolution MRI. Deep learning has emerged as a powerful means for accelerated MRI reconstruction by providing data-driven regularizers that are directly learned from data. These data-driven priors typically remain unchanged for future data in the testing phase once they are learned during training. In this study, we propose to use a transfer learning approach to fine-tune these regularizers for new subjects using a self-supervision approach. While the proposed approach can compromise the extremely fast reconstruction time of deep learning MRI methods, our results on knee MRI indicate that such adaptation can substantially reduce the remaining artifacts in reconstructed images. In addition, the proposed approach has the potential to reduce the risks of generalization to rare pathological conditions, which may be unavailable in the training data

Multi-Mask Self-Supervised Learning for Physics-Guided Neural Networks in Highly Accelerated MRI

Purpose: To develop an improved self-supervised learning strategy that efficiently uses the acquired data for training a physics-guided reconstruction network without a database of fully-sampled data. Methods: Currently self-supervised learning for physics-guided reconstruction networks splits acquired undersampled data into two disjoint sets, where one is used for data consistency (DC) in the unrolled network and the other to define the training loss. The proposed multi-mask self-supervised learning via data undersampling (SSDU) splits acquired measurements into multiple pairs of disjoint sets for each training sample, while using one of these sets for DC units and the other for defining loss, thereby more efficiently using the undersampled data. Multi-mask SSDU is applied on fully-sampled 3D knee and prospectively undersampled 3D brain MRI datasets, which are retrospectively subsampled to acceleration rate (R)=8, and compared to CG-SENSE and single-mask SSDU DL-MRI, as well as supervised DL-MRI when fully-sampled data is available. Results: Results on knee MRI show that the proposed multi-mask SSDU outperforms SSDU and performs closely with supervised DL-MRI, while significantly outperforming CG-SENSE. A clinical reader study further ranks the multi-mask SSDU higher than supervised DL-MRI in terms of SNR and aliasing artifacts. Results on brain MRI show that multi-mask SSDU achieves better reconstruction quality compared to SSDU and CG-SENSE. Reader study demonstrates that multi-mask SSDU at R=8 significantly improves reconstruction compared to single-mask SSDU at R=8, as well as CG-SENSE at R=2. Conclusion: The proposed multi-mask SSDU approach enables improved training of physics-guided neural networks without fully-sampled data, by enabling efficient use of the undersampled data with multiple masks

Self-Supervised Physics-Based Deep Learning MRI Reconstruction Without Fully-Sampled Data

Deep learning (DL) has emerged as a tool for improving accelerated MRI reconstruction. A common strategy among DL methods is the physics-based approach, where a regularized iterative algorithm alternating between data consistency and a regularizer is unrolled for a finite number of iterations. This unrolled network is then trained end-to-end in a supervised manner, using fully-sampled data as ground truth for the network output. However, in a number of scenarios, it is difficult to obtain fully-sampled datasets, due to physiological constraints such as organ motion or physical constraints such as signal decay. In this work, we tackle this issue and propose a self-supervised learning strategy that enables physics-based DL reconstruction without fully-sampled data. Our approach is to divide the acquired sub-sampled points for each scan into training and validation subsets. During training, data consistency is enforced over the training subset, while the validation subset is used to define the loss function. Results show that the proposed self-supervised learning method successfully reconstructs images without fully-sampled data, performing similarly to the supervised approach that is trained with fully-sampled references. This has implications for physics-based inverse problem approaches for other settings, where fully-sampled data is not available or possible to acquire.Comment: 5 Pages, 5 Figure

Accelerated Coronary MRI with sRAKI: A Database-Free Self-Consistent Neural Network k-space Reconstruction for Arbitrary Undersampling

This study aims to accelerate coronary MRI using a novel reconstruction algorithm, called self-consistent robust artificial-neural-networks for k-space interpolation (sRAKI). sRAKI performs iterative parallel imaging reconstruction by enforcing coil self-consistency using subject-specific neural networks. This approach extends the linear convolutions in SPIRiT to nonlinear interpolation using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). These CNNs are trained individually for each scan using the scan-specific autocalibrating signal (ACS) data. Reconstruction is performed by imposing the learned self-consistency and data-consistency enabling sRAKI to support random undersampling patterns. Fully-sampled targeted right coronary artery MRI was acquired in six healthy subjects for evaluation. The data were retrospectively undersampled, and reconstructed using SPIRiT, $\ell_1$-SPIRiT and sRAKI for acceleration rates of 2 to 5. Additionally, prospectively undersampled whole-heart coronary MRI was acquired to further evaluate performance. The results indicate that sRAKI reduces noise amplification and blurring artifacts compared with SPIRiT and $\ell_1$-SPIRiT, especially at high acceleration rates in targeted data. Quantitative analysis shows that sRAKI improves normalized mean-squared-error (~44% and ~21% over SPIRiT and $\ell_1$-SPIRiT at rate 5) and vessel sharpness (~10% and ~20% over SPIRiT and $\ell_1$-SPIRiT at rate 5). In addition, whole-heart data shows the sharpest coronary arteries when resolved using sRAKI, with 11% and 15% improvement in vessel sharpness over SPIRiT and $\ell_1$-SPIRiT, respectively. Thus, sRAKI is a database-free neural network-based reconstruction technique that may further accelerate coronary MRI with arbitrary undersampling patterns, while improving noise resilience over linear parallel imaging and image sharpness over $\ell_1$ regularization techniques.Comment: This work has been partially presented at ISMRM Workshop on Machine Learning Part 2 (October 2018), SCMR/ISMRM Co-Provided Workshop (February 2019), IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (April 2019) and ISMRM 27$^{th}$ Annual Meeting and Exhibition (May 2019