Magnetic resonance imaging apparatus and method

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9779485-B2
Application number	US-201514742069-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 17, 2015
Priority date	Jul 24, 2014
Publication date	Oct 3, 2017
Grant date	Oct 3, 2017

Abstract

A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus and an MRI method are provided. The MRI apparatus includes a data acquisition unit configured to acquire a first image by performing an MRI scan on an object. The MRI apparatus further includes an image acquisition unit configured to acquire a second image by performing de-noising filtering on the first image in a spatial domain, acquire a third image based on the first image and the second image, acquire a fourth image by performing low-pass filtering on the third image in a frequency domain, and acquire a final image based on the second image and the fourth image.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus comprising:
at least one hardware processor implementing:
a data acquisition unit configured to acquire a first image, based on an MRI scan on an object; and
an image acquisition unit configured to:
acquire a second image by performing de-noising filtering on the first image in a spatial domain;
acquire a third image, based on the first image and the second image;
convert the third image from the spatial domain into a frequency domain;
acquire a fourth image by performing low-pass filtering on the third image converted into the frequency domain;
convert the fourth image from the frequency domain into the spatial domain; and
acquire a final image, based on the second image and the fourth image converted into the spatial domain.

2. The MRI apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the de-noising filtering is edge preserving de-noising filtering, and
the image acquisition unit comprises a spatial domain processor configured to acquire the second image by performing the edge preserving de-noising filtering on the first image in the spatial domain.

3. The MRI apparatus of claim 2 , wherein the edge preserving de-noising filtering comprises any one or any combination of bilateral filtering, anisotropic filtering, block-matching and three-dimensional filtering, and non-local means filtering.

4. The MRI apparatus of claim 2 , wherein the spatial domain processor comprises:
an edge preserving de-noise filter configured to perform the edge preserving de-noising filtering on the first image in the spatial domain to acquire the second image;
a residual image acquisition unit configured to acquire the third image, based on the first image and the second image; and
a domain transform unit configured to convert the third image from the spatial domain into the frequency domain.

5. The MRI apparatus of claim 4 , wherein the residual image acquisition unit is further configured to acquire the third image by subtracting the second image from the first image.

6. The MRI apparatus of claim 4 , wherein the domain transform unit is further configured to apply a Fourier transform or a Fast Fourier transform to the third image to convert the third image from the spatial domain into the frequency domain.

7. The MRI apparatus of claim 4 , wherein the image acquisition unit further comprises a frequency domain processor configured to acquire the fourth image by performing the low-pass filtering on the third image converted into the frequency domain to remove ringing artifacts in the third image converted into the frequency domain.

8. The MRI apparatus of claim 7 , wherein the frequency domain processor comprises:
a low-pass filter configured to perform the low-pass filtering on the third image converted into the frequency domain to acquire the fourth image; and
a domain inverse transform unit configured to convert the fourth image from the frequency domain into the spatial domain.

9. The MRI apparatus of claim 8 , wherein the image acquisition unit further comprises a final image acquisition unit configured to acquire the final image by adding the second image and the fourth image converted into the spatial domain.

10. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus comprising:
a data acquisition unit configured to acquire a first image based on an MRI scan on an object; and
an image acquisition unit configured to
acquire a second image by performing first filtering on the first image in a spatial domain,
acquire a third image by subtracting the second image from the first image,
convert the third image from the spatial domain into a frequency domain,
acquire a fourth image by performing second filtering on the third image converted into the frequency domain,
convert the fourth image from the frequency domain into the spatial domain, and
acquire a final image based on the second image and the fourth image converted into the spatial domain,

wherein the second filtering is low-pass filtering.

11. The MRI apparatus of claim 10 , wherein the first filtering is edge preserving de-noising filtering.

12. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method comprising:
acquiring a first image based on an MRI scan on an object;
acquiring a second image by performing de-noising filtering on the first image in a spatial domain;
acquiring a third image based on the first image and the second image;
converting the third image from the spatial domain into a frequency domain;
acquiring a fourth image by performing low-pass filtering on the third image converted into the frequency domain;
converting the fourth image from the frequency domain into the spatial domain; and
acquiring a final image based on the second image and the fourth image converted into the spatial domain.

13. The MRI method of claim 12 , wherein the acquiring the second image comprises acquiring the second image by performing edge preserving de-noising filtering on the first image in the spatial domain.

14. The MRI method of claim 13 , wherein the edge preserving de-noising filtering comprises any one or any combination of bilateral filtering, anisotropic filtering, block-matching and three-dimensional filtering, and non-local means filtering.

15. The MRI method of claim 12 , wherein the acquiring the third image comprises acquiring the third image by subtracting the second image from the first image.

16. The MRI method of claim 12 , wherein the acquiring the third image comprises converting the third image from the spatial domain into the frequency domain.

17. The MRI method of claim 16 , wherein the converting the third image comprises applying a Fourier transform or Fast Fourier transform to the third image.

18. The MRI method of claim 16 , wherein the acquiring the fourth image comprises:
acquiring the fourth image by performing the low-pass filtering on the third image converted into the frequency domain.

19. The MRI method of claim 18 , wherein the acquiring the final image comprises acquiring the final image by adding the second image and the fourth image converted into the spatial domain.

20. The MRI method of claim 12 , wherein the acquiring the fourth image comprises acquiring the fourth image by performing the low-pass filtering on the third image in the frequency domain to remove ringing artifacts in the third image.

21. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a program comprising instructions to cause a computer to perform the method of claim 12 .

22. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus comprising:
a spatial domain processor configured to:
filter an MRI image in a spatial domain to generate a first filtered image,
generate a ringing artifacts image based on the first filtered image and the MRI image, and
convert the ringing artifacts image from the spatial domain into a frequency domain;

a frequency domain processor configured to:
perform low-pass filtering on the ringing artifacts image in the frequency domain to generate a second filtered image, and
convert the second filtered image from the frequency domain into the spatial domain; and

a final image acquisition unit configured to acquire a final image based on the first filtered image and the second filtered image converted into the spatial domain.

23. The MRI apparatus of claim 22 , wherein the spatial domain processor is configured to:
perform edge preserving de-noise filtering on the MRI image in the spatial domain to generate th

Assignees

• Samsung Electronics Co Ltd
• Korea Advanced Inst Sci & Tech

Inventors

• Eun Jung-Hwi
• Ra Jong Beom

Classifications

• G06T2207/10088

  Magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] · CPC title

• G06T5/10

  using non-spatial domain filtering · CPC title

• G06T5/002 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G01R33/56545

  caused by finite or discrete sampling, e.g. Gibbs ringing, truncation artefacts, phase aliasing artefacts · CPC title

• G06T2207/20192

  Edge enhancement; Edge preservation · CPC title