CUTE-MRI: Conformalized Uncertainty-based framework for Time-adaptivE MRI

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Fischer, Paul, Morshuis, Jan Nikolas, Küstner, Thomas, Baumgartner, Christian
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Fischer, Paul
Morshuis, Jan Nikolas
Küstner, Thomas
Baumgartner, Christian
author_facet Fischer, Paul
Morshuis, Jan Nikolas
Küstner, Thomas
Baumgartner, Christian
contents Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) offers unparalleled soft-tissue contrast but is fundamentally limited by long acquisition times. While deep learning-based accelerated MRI can dramatically shorten scan times, the reconstruction from undersampled data introduces ambiguity resulting from an ill-posed problem with infinitely many possible solutions that propagates to downstream clinical tasks. This uncertainty is usually ignored during the acquisition process as acceleration factors are often fixed a priori, resulting in scans that are either unnecessarily long or of insufficient quality for a given clinical endpoint. This work introduces a dynamic, uncertainty-aware acquisition framework that adjusts scan time on a per-subject basis. Our method leverages a probabilistic reconstruction model to estimate image uncertainty, which is then propagated through a full analysis pipeline to a quantitative metric of interest (e.g., patellar cartilage volume or cardiac ejection fraction). We use conformal prediction to transform this uncertainty into a rigorous, calibrated confidence interval for the metric. During acquisition, the system iteratively samples k-space, updates the reconstruction, and evaluates the confidence interval. The scan terminates automatically once the uncertainty meets a user-predefined precision target. We validate our framework on both knee and cardiac MRI datasets. Our results demonstrate that this adaptive approach reduces scan times compared to fixed protocols while providing formal statistical guarantees on the precision of the final image. This framework moves beyond fixed acceleration factors, enabling patient-specific acquisitions that balance scan efficiency with diagnostic confidence, a critical step towards personalized and resource-efficient MRI.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_14952
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CUTE-MRI: Conformalized Uncertainty-based framework for Time-adaptivE MRI
Fischer, Paul
Morshuis, Jan Nikolas
Küstner, Thomas
Baumgartner, Christian
Image and Video Processing
Machine Learning
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) offers unparalleled soft-tissue contrast but is fundamentally limited by long acquisition times. While deep learning-based accelerated MRI can dramatically shorten scan times, the reconstruction from undersampled data introduces ambiguity resulting from an ill-posed problem with infinitely many possible solutions that propagates to downstream clinical tasks. This uncertainty is usually ignored during the acquisition process as acceleration factors are often fixed a priori, resulting in scans that are either unnecessarily long or of insufficient quality for a given clinical endpoint. This work introduces a dynamic, uncertainty-aware acquisition framework that adjusts scan time on a per-subject basis. Our method leverages a probabilistic reconstruction model to estimate image uncertainty, which is then propagated through a full analysis pipeline to a quantitative metric of interest (e.g., patellar cartilage volume or cardiac ejection fraction). We use conformal prediction to transform this uncertainty into a rigorous, calibrated confidence interval for the metric. During acquisition, the system iteratively samples k-space, updates the reconstruction, and evaluates the confidence interval. The scan terminates automatically once the uncertainty meets a user-predefined precision target. We validate our framework on both knee and cardiac MRI datasets. Our results demonstrate that this adaptive approach reduces scan times compared to fixed protocols while providing formal statistical guarantees on the precision of the final image. This framework moves beyond fixed acceleration factors, enabling patient-specific acquisitions that balance scan efficiency with diagnostic confidence, a critical step towards personalized and resource-efficient MRI.
title CUTE-MRI: Conformalized Uncertainty-based framework for Time-adaptivE MRI
topic Image and Video Processing
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14952