Simultaneous multislice EPI prospective motion correction by real-time receiver phase correction and coil sensitivity map interpolation

Abstract

Purpose: To improve the image reconstruction for prospective motion correction (PMC) of simultaneous multislice (SMS) EPI of the brain, an update of receiver phase and resampling of coil sensitivities are proposed and evaluated.

Methods: A camera-based system was used to track head motion (3 translations and 3 rotations) and dynamically update the scan position and orientation. We derived the change in receiver phase associated with a shifted field of view (FOV) and applied it in real-time to each k-space line of the EPI readout trains. Second, for the SMS reconstruction, we adapted resampled coil sensitivity profiles reflecting the movement of slices. Single-shot gradient-echo SMS-EPI scans were performed in phantoms and human subjects for validation.

Results: Brain SMS-EPI scans in the presence of motion with PMC and no phase correction for scan plane shift showed noticeable artifacts. These artifacts were visually and quantitatively attenuated when corrections were enabled. Correcting misaligned coil sensitivity maps improved the temporal SNR (tSNR) of time series by 24% (p = 0.0007) for scans with large movements (up to ˜35 mm and 30°). Correcting the receiver phase improved the tSNR of a scan with minimal head movement by 50% from 50 to 75 for a United Kingdom biobank protocol.

Conclusion: Reconstruction-induced motion artifacts in single-shot SMS-EPI scans acquired with PMC can be removed by dynamically adjusting the receiver phase of each line across EPI readout trains and updating coil sensitivity profiles during reconstruction. The method may be a valuable tool for SMS-EPI scans in the presence of subject motion.

Keywords: SMS-EPI; coil sensitivity interpolation; motion artifacts; prospective motion correction; real-time phase correction.