Motion Compensated Self Supervised Deep Learning for Highly Accelerated 3D Ultrashort Echo Time Pulmonary MRI

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel self-supervised deep learning method, XD-MBDL, that incorporates respiratory motion compensation to improve the quality of 3D pulmonary MRI reconstructions from free breathing data.

Contribution

The study presents a new self-supervised, motion compensated deep learning architecture that combines multiple respiratory states for high-quality 3D pulmonary MRI reconstruction.

Findings

Improved image quality over existing methods in SNR, CNR, and visual assessment.

Reduced reconstruction time compared to XD-GRASP and iMoCo.

Effective reconstruction of respiratory phases from free breathing data.

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate motion compensated, self-supervised, model based deep learning (MBDL) as a method to reconstruct free breathing, 3D Pulmonary ultrashort echo time (UTE) acquisitions. Theory and Methods: A self-supervised eXtra Dimension MBDL architecture (XD-MBDL) was developed that combined respiratory states to reconstruct a single high-quality 3D image. Non-rigid, GPU based motion fields were incorporated into this architecture by estimating motion fields from a low resolution motion resolved (XD-GRASP) iterative reconstruction. Motion Compensated XD-MBDL was evaluated on lung UTE datasets with and without contrast and was compared to constrained reconstructions and variants of self-supervised MBDL that do not consider respiratory motion. Results: Images reconstructed using XD-MBDL demonstrate improved image quality as measured by apparent SNR, CNR and visual assessment relative to self-supervised MBDL approaches that do not account for dynamic respiratory states, XD-GRASP and a recently proposed motion compensated iterative reconstruction strategy (iMoCo). Additionally, XD-MBDL reduced reconstruction time relative to both XD-GRASP and iMoCo. Conclusion: A method was developed to allow self-supervised MBDL to combine multiple respiratory states to reconstruct a single image. This method was combined with GPU-based image registration to further improve reconstruction quality. This approach showed promising results reconstructing a user-selected respiratory phase from free breathing 3D pulmonary UTE acquisitions.