Correction of Blurring due to a Difference in Scanning Direction of Field-Free Line in Projection-Based Magnetic Particle Imaging

TL;DR

This paper presents a deconvolution-based correction method for blurring caused by scanning direction differences in projection-based magnetic particle imaging, improving image clarity and reliability.

Contribution

A novel deconvolution technique using a signal-delay constant ({}) to correct scanning direction-induced blurring in MPI images.

Findings

The correction method reduces the full width at half maximum of phantom images.

The  value correlates linearly with FFL velocity.

Improved image quality confirmed with phantom experiments.

Abstract

In projection-based magnetic particle imaging (MPI) with a field-free-line (FFL) encoding scheme, projection data are usually acquired by moving the FFL in a zigzag and a difference in the projection data occurs depending on the scanning direction of FFL, resulting in blurring in the reconstructed images. In this study, we developed a method for correcting the blur by deconvolution using a signal-delay constant ({\xi}). The {\xi} value for correction ({\xi}c) was determined by acquiring projection data in positive and negative directions and searching for the {\xi} value which minimized the 2-norm between the deconvolved projection data in the two directions. We validated our method using a line and A-shaped phantoms for various velocities of FFL (vFFL). The {\xi}c value correlated linearly with vFFL. The full width at half maximum of the line phantom decreased significantly after correction of the blur. The effectiveness of our method was also confirmed by the MPI images of the A-shaped phantom. These results suggest that our method will be useful for enhancing the reliability of projection-based MPI.