Efficient Noise Calculation in Deep Learning-based MRI Reconstructions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Dalmaz, Onat, Desai, Arjun D., Heckel, Reinhard, Çukur, Tolga, Chaudhari, Akshay S., Hargreaves, Brian A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Dalmaz, Onat
Desai, Arjun D.
Heckel, Reinhard
Çukur, Tolga
Chaudhari, Akshay S.
Hargreaves, Brian A.
author_facet Dalmaz, Onat
Desai, Arjun D.
Heckel, Reinhard
Çukur, Tolga
Chaudhari, Akshay S.
Hargreaves, Brian A.
contents Accelerated MRI reconstruction involves solving an ill-posed inverse problem where noise in acquired data propagates to the reconstructed images. Noise analyses are central to MRI reconstruction for providing an explicit measure of solution fidelity and for guiding the design and deployment of novel reconstruction methods. However, deep learning (DL)-based reconstruction methods have often overlooked noise propagation due to inherent analytical and computational challenges, despite its critical importance. This work proposes a theoretically grounded, memory-efficient technique to calculate voxel-wise variance for quantifying uncertainty due to acquisition noise in accelerated MRI reconstructions. Our approach approximates noise covariance using the DL network's Jacobian, which is intractable to calculate. To circumvent this, we derive an unbiased estimator for the diagonal of this covariance matrix (voxel-wise variance) and introduce a Jacobian sketching technique to efficiently implement it. We evaluate our method on knee and brain MRI datasets for both data- and physics-driven networks trained in supervised and unsupervised manners. Compared to empirical references obtained via Monte Carlo simulations, our technique achieves near-equivalent performance while reducing computational and memory demands by an order of magnitude or more. Furthermore, our method is robust across varying input noise levels, acceleration factors, and diverse undersampling schemes, highlighting its broad applicability. Our work reintroduces accurate and efficient noise analysis as a central tenet of reconstruction algorithms, holding promise to reshape how we evaluate and deploy DL-based MRI. Our code will be made publicly available upon acceptance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_02007
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Efficient Noise Calculation in Deep Learning-based MRI Reconstructions
Dalmaz, Onat
Desai, Arjun D.
Heckel, Reinhard
Çukur, Tolga
Chaudhari, Akshay S.
Hargreaves, Brian A.
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
65C60, 94A08, 68T07
I.4.5; I.2.10; G.1.2
Accelerated MRI reconstruction involves solving an ill-posed inverse problem where noise in acquired data propagates to the reconstructed images. Noise analyses are central to MRI reconstruction for providing an explicit measure of solution fidelity and for guiding the design and deployment of novel reconstruction methods. However, deep learning (DL)-based reconstruction methods have often overlooked noise propagation due to inherent analytical and computational challenges, despite its critical importance. This work proposes a theoretically grounded, memory-efficient technique to calculate voxel-wise variance for quantifying uncertainty due to acquisition noise in accelerated MRI reconstructions. Our approach approximates noise covariance using the DL network's Jacobian, which is intractable to calculate. To circumvent this, we derive an unbiased estimator for the diagonal of this covariance matrix (voxel-wise variance) and introduce a Jacobian sketching technique to efficiently implement it. We evaluate our method on knee and brain MRI datasets for both data- and physics-driven networks trained in supervised and unsupervised manners. Compared to empirical references obtained via Monte Carlo simulations, our technique achieves near-equivalent performance while reducing computational and memory demands by an order of magnitude or more. Furthermore, our method is robust across varying input noise levels, acceleration factors, and diverse undersampling schemes, highlighting its broad applicability. Our work reintroduces accurate and efficient noise analysis as a central tenet of reconstruction algorithms, holding promise to reshape how we evaluate and deploy DL-based MRI. Our code will be made publicly available upon acceptance.
title Efficient Noise Calculation in Deep Learning-based MRI Reconstructions
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
65C60, 94A08, 68T07
I.4.5; I.2.10; G.1.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.02007