Encoding Enhanced Complex CNN for Accurate and Highly Accelerated MRI

IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2024 May;43(5):1828-1840. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2024.3351211. Epub 2024 May 2.

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using hyperpolarized noble gases provides a way to visualize the structure and function of human lung, but the long imaging time limits its broad research and clinical applications. Deep learning has demonstrated great potential for accelerating MRI by reconstructing images from undersampled data. However, most existing deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) directly apply square convolution to k-space data without considering the inherent properties of k-space sampling, limiting k-space learning efficiency and image reconstruction quality. In this work, we propose an encoding enhanced (EN2) complex CNN for highly undersampled pulmonary MRI reconstruction. EN2 complex CNN employs convolution along either the frequency or phase-encoding direction, resembling the mechanisms of k-space sampling, to maximize the utilization of the encoding correlation and integrity within a row or column of k-space. We also employ complex convolution to learn rich representations from the complex k-space data. In addition, we develop a feature-strengthened modularized unit to further boost the reconstruction performance. Experiments demonstrate that our approach can accurately reconstruct hyperpolarized 129Xe and 1H lung MRI from 6-fold undersampled k-space data and provide lung function measurements with minimal biases compared with fully sampled images. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithmic components and indicate that the proposed approach could be used for accelerated pulmonary MRI in research and clinical lung disease patient care.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Deep Learning
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted* / methods
  • Lung* / diagnostic imaging
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging* / methods
  • Neural Networks, Computer*
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Xenon Isotopes / chemistry

Substances

  • Xenon Isotopes