Fast and Robust 4D Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Cardiovascular Applications

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Joachim Lotz; Professor Dr. Martin Uecker
• Subject Area: Medical Physics, Biomedical Technology ; Nuclear Medicine, Radiotherapy, Radiobiology
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 384478401

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

In this project, we developed a new free-running technique for cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that does not require breath-holds or synchronization with an electrocardiogram. This technique combines fast 3D stack-of-stars scanning that acquires data continuously during free breathing with a new approach to sort the data into cardiac and respiratory phases that is more robust to a-periodic motion than previous algorithms. Time-resolved images or 3D volumes are then reconstructed with advanced iterative optimization algorithms that use regularization techniques to exploit multidimensional correlations. This improves the quality of the reconstructed images and makes it possible to reconstruct high-resolution volumes from highly undersampled data, reducing scan time to only a few minutes. We investigated different algorithms and regularization techniques in this project. All self-gating and reconstruction algorithms developed during this project were made available to the scientific community by integrating them into our open-source toolbox BART, which already contains many state-of-the-art algorithms for image reconstruction. We tested the developed methods for free-breathing imaging of human heart on data from healthy volunteers achieving time-resolved high-resolution reconstructions of 3D volumes of the human heart from data acquired in three minutes.

Publications

• Fast and Robust Multi-Dimensional Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Doctoral thesis, University of Göttingen.
  Sebastian Rosenzweig
  
• Higher-Dimensional Extensions of Nonlinear Inverse Reconstruction for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Doctoral Thesis. University of Göttingen
  H. Christian & M. Holme
  
• ENLIVE: A Non-Linear Calibrationless Method for Parallel Imaging using a Low-Rank Constraint, ISMRM 2017, In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 25; 5160
  Holme H. C. M., Ong F., Rosenzweig S., Wilke R. N., Lustig M. & Uecker M.
  
• Banding-Free Reconstruction in Frequency-Modulated bSSFP using Virtual Coils with Regularized Non-Linear Inversion. ISMRM 2018, In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 26; 2870
  Holme H. C. M., Scholand N., Rosenzweig S., Wilke R. N. & Uecker M.
  
• Extending the Simple Method for Adaptive Gradient-Delay Compensation in Radial MRI. In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 26; 4207 (2018b)
  Rosenzweig S., Holme H. C. M., Wilke R. N. & Uecker M.
  
• Self-Gated and Real-time Simultaneous Multi-Slice Cardiac MRI from the Same Acquisition. ISMRM 2018, In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 26; 209
  Rosenzweig S., Holme H. C. M., Scholand N., Wilke R. N. & Uecker M.
  
• Simple auto‐calibrated gradient delay estimation from few spokes using Radial Intersections (RING). Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 81(3), 1898-1906.
  Rosenzweig, Sebastian; Holme, H. Christian M. & Uecker, Martin
  
• ENLIVE: An Efficient Nonlinear Method for Calibrationless and Robust Parallel Imaging. Scientific Reports, 9(1).
  Holme H. Christian M.; Rosenzweig Sebastian; Ong Frank; Wilke Robin N.; Lustig Michael & Uecker Martin
  
• Non-linear Inverse Compressed-Sensing Reconstruction for Self-Gated Multidimensional Cardiac MRI: XD-NLINV. ISMRM 2019, In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 27; 4753
  Holme H. C. M., Rosenzweig S., Wang X. & Uecker M.
  
• Plastic Bricks in MRI: An Efficient Way to Build Static and Dynamic Phantoms. ISMRM 2019, In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 27; 1593 (2019)
  Scholand N., Rosenzweig S., Ertingshausen F. & Uecker M.
  
• Robust Cardiac and Respiratory Self- Gating Using an Adapted Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA-FARI): Application to Simultaneous- Multi-Slice Imaging. ISMRM 2019, In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 27; 2444 (2019a)
  Rosenzweig S., Scholand N., Holme H. C. M. & Uecker M.
  
• Simple Auto-Calibrated Gradient Delay Estimation From Few Spokes Using Radial Intersections (RING) for Interactive Real-time MRI. ISMRM 2019, In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 27; 445.
  Rosenzweig, Sebastian; Holme, H. Christian M. & Uecker, Martin
  
• Cardiac and Respiratory Self-Gating in Radial MRI Using an Adapted Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA-FARY). IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 39(10), 3029-3041.
  Rosenzweig, Sebastian; Scholand, Nick; Holme, H. Christian M. & Uecker, Martin
  
• Novel insights on SSA-FARY: Amplitude-based respiratory binning in self-gated cardiac MRI. ISMRM 2021, In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 29; 1956 (2021b)
  Rosenzweig S. & Uecker M.
  
• Ungated time-resolved cardiac MRI with temporal subspace constraint using SSA-FARY SE. ISMRM 2021, In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 29; 0227 (2021a)
  Rosenzweig S. & Uecker M.
  
• Free-breathing, motion-resolved myocardial T1 mapping using inversion-recovery radial FLASH and model-based reconstruction. ISMRM 2021, In Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 29; 3598.
  Wang X., Rosenzweig S., Blumenthal M., Tan Z., Scholand N. & Uecker M.
  
• Free‐breathing myocardial T1 mapping using inversion‐recovery radial FLASH and motion‐resolved model‐based reconstruction. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 89(4), 1368-1384.
  Wang, Xiaoqing; Rosenzweig, Sebastian; Roeloffs, Volkert; Blumenthal, Moritz; Scholand, Nick; Tan, Zhengguo; Holme, H. Christian M.; Unterberg‐Buchwald, Christina; Hinkel, Rabea & Uecker, Martin
  
• Free-Breathing Liver Fat,R₂* andB₀ Field Mapping Using Multi-Echo Radial FLASH and Regularized Model-Based Reconstruction. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 42(5), 1374-1387.
  Tan, Zhengguo; Unterberg-Buchwald, Christina; Blumenthal, Moritz; Scholand, Nick; Schaten, Philip; Holme, Christian; Wang, Xiaoqing; Raddatz, Dirk & Uecker, Martin