Accelerating Low-field MRI: From Compressed Sensing to Deep Learning Reconstruction with CNNs and Transformers

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Shimron, Efrat, Shan, Shanshan, Grover, James, Koonjoo, Neha, Shen, Sheng, Boele, Thomas, Sorby-Adams, Annabel J., Kirsch, John E., Rosen, Matthew S., Waddington, David E. J.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911151863889920
author Shimron, Efrat
Shan, Shanshan
Grover, James
Koonjoo, Neha
Shen, Sheng
Boele, Thomas
Sorby-Adams, Annabel J.
Kirsch, John E.
Rosen, Matthew S.
Waddington, David E. J.
author_facet Shimron, Efrat
Shan, Shanshan
Grover, James
Koonjoo, Neha
Shen, Sheng
Boele, Thomas
Sorby-Adams, Annabel J.
Kirsch, John E.
Rosen, Matthew S.
Waddington, David E. J.
contents Portable, low-field Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners are increasingly being deployed in clinical settings. However, key barriers to their widespread use include low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), generally low image quality, and long scan durations. Hence, methods for accelerating acquisition and boosting image quality are critically important to enable clinically actionable, high-quality imaging in these systems. Despite the role that compressed sensing (CS) and deep learning (DL)-based methods have played in improving image quality for high-field MRI, their adoption for low-field imaging is still in its infancy, and it remains unclear how robust these methods are in low-SNR regimes. Here, we propose, investigate, and compare four reconstruction approaches: (i) L1-wavelet CS; (ii) a data-driven network; (iii) an unrolled network; and (iv) a Swin Transformer Cascade. We evaluate their performance across a range of SNR values using publicly available datasets and ultra-low field (6.5 mT) MRI data. Our results show that the unrolled network and Swin Transformer cascade outperform CS and data-driven models. While transformer-based models achieve the highest performance at high SNR, unrolled convolution-based networks are more robust in ultra-low SNR settings and often outperform transformers, indicating that simpler DL architectures may be better suited to low-field MRI. This work highlights both the potential and limitations of advanced reconstruction techniques in low-field MRI and pinpoints effective DL strategies for addressing SNR challenges.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_06704
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Accelerating Low-field MRI: From Compressed Sensing to Deep Learning Reconstruction with CNNs and Transformers
Shimron, Efrat
Shan, Shanshan
Grover, James
Koonjoo, Neha
Shen, Sheng
Boele, Thomas
Sorby-Adams, Annabel J.
Kirsch, John E.
Rosen, Matthew S.
Waddington, David E. J.
Medical Physics
Portable, low-field Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners are increasingly being deployed in clinical settings. However, key barriers to their widespread use include low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), generally low image quality, and long scan durations. Hence, methods for accelerating acquisition and boosting image quality are critically important to enable clinically actionable, high-quality imaging in these systems. Despite the role that compressed sensing (CS) and deep learning (DL)-based methods have played in improving image quality for high-field MRI, their adoption for low-field imaging is still in its infancy, and it remains unclear how robust these methods are in low-SNR regimes. Here, we propose, investigate, and compare four reconstruction approaches: (i) L1-wavelet CS; (ii) a data-driven network; (iii) an unrolled network; and (iv) a Swin Transformer Cascade. We evaluate their performance across a range of SNR values using publicly available datasets and ultra-low field (6.5 mT) MRI data. Our results show that the unrolled network and Swin Transformer cascade outperform CS and data-driven models. While transformer-based models achieve the highest performance at high SNR, unrolled convolution-based networks are more robust in ultra-low SNR settings and often outperform transformers, indicating that simpler DL architectures may be better suited to low-field MRI. This work highlights both the potential and limitations of advanced reconstruction techniques in low-field MRI and pinpoints effective DL strategies for addressing SNR challenges.
title Accelerating Low-field MRI: From Compressed Sensing to Deep Learning Reconstruction with CNNs and Transformers
topic Medical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.06704