An Optimization-Based Meta-Learning Model for MRI Reconstruction with Diverse Dataset

J Imaging. 2021 Oct 31;7(11):231. doi: 10.3390/jimaging7110231.

Abstract

This work aims at developing a generalizable Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) reconstruction method in the meta-learning framework. Specifically, we develop a deep reconstruction network induced by a learnable optimization algorithm (LOA) to solve the nonconvex nonsmooth variational model of MRI image reconstruction. In this model, the nonconvex nonsmooth regularization term is parameterized as a structured deep network where the network parameters can be learned from data. We partition these network parameters into two parts: a task-invariant part for the common feature encoder component of the regularization, and a task-specific part to account for the variations in the heterogeneous training and testing data. We train the regularization parameters in a bilevel optimization framework which significantly improves the robustness of the training process and the generalization ability of the network. We conduct a series of numerical experiments using heterogeneous MRI data sets with various undersampling patterns, ratios, and acquisition settings. The experimental results show that our network yields greatly improved reconstruction quality over existing methods and can generalize well to new reconstruction problems whose undersampling patterns/trajectories are not present during training.

Keywords: MRI reconstruction; domain generalization; meta-learning.