Background phase correction for quantitative cardiovascular MRI

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9911062-B1
Application number	US-201514918184-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Oct 20, 2015
Priority date	Oct 20, 2015
Publication date	Mar 6, 2018
Grant date	Mar 6, 2018

Abstract

Systems and methods of correcting eddy current-induced background phase (EC-BP) in magnetic resonance imaging (PC-MRI) data. The method includes acquiring a slice of interest (SOI) at a first table position using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, the slice of interest having a predetermined imaging orientation and being acquired having predetermined gradient waveforms; acquiring at least one additional slice at a second table position using the MRI scanner, the at least one additional slice having a same imaging orientation as the slice of interest and being acquired using the same gradient waveforms as the slice of interest; determining time-averaged phase maps from the slice of interest and the at least one additional slice; determining a correction map from the time-averaged phase maps; and correcting a background phase (BP) of the slice of interest using the correction map.

First claim

What is claimed:

1. A method of correcting eddy currents-induced background phase (EC-BP) in magnetic resonance imaging data, comprising:
acquiring phase-contrast data from a slice of interest (SOI) using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, with a user-specified table position and SOI position and orientation; the SOI position and orientation, with respect to the magnet coordinate system, being controlled by varying a center frequency of an applied radio-frequency (RF) excitation pulse in combination with a variation of a slice select gradient amplitude and direction;
acquiring phase-contrast data from at least one additional slice, the at least one additional slice having the same position and orientation, with respect to the magnet coordinate system, as the SOI and being acquired using the slice select gradient amplitude and direction, the at least one additional slice imaging a physically different location of the subject, achieved by either changing the table position with respect to the position used for the SOI acquisition or by physically moving the subject within the scanner;
performing image reconstruction from k-space to image domain for the SOI and the at least one additional slice;
subtracting a phase of a reconstructed additional slice from a phase of a reconstructed SOI to extract phase difference maps for the SOI and the at least one additional slice;
determining a correction map by:
processing the phase difference maps from both the SOI and the at least one additional slice; and
estimating EC-BP in accordance with a first relationship:

x
^

mSAP

=

arg
⁢

⁢
min

x

⁢



Bx
-
z



Ω
2

,

wherein xε k×1 represents the k coefficients of a 2D polynomial, wherein B and z are obtained by vertical concatenation of N temporally-averaged slices, such that B [A 1 T |A 2 T | . . . |A N T ] T and z [y 1 T |y 2 T | . . . |y N T ] T , and ∥Bx−z∥ Ω 2 (Bx−z)′Ω −1 (Bx−z), wherein each column of matrix Aε M×k defines the spatial distribution of one of the polynomial terms, wherein vector yε M×1 is the measured temporally-averaged phase map, wherein Ωε NM×NM is a covariance matrix constructed by computing inner products of mean-subtracted temporal profiles across all pixel pairs in z; and

correcting the BP of the SOI using the correction map.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein volumetric field of view is used instead of 2D slices.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein multiple encoding directions are used and correction is applied to each encoding direction.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the background arises from sources other than eddy currents.

5. The method of claim 1 , further enforcing an l 1 -norm penalty on polynomial coefficients to transform the first relationship as follows:

x
^

mSAP

=

arg
⁢

⁢
min

x

⁢



Bx
-
z



Ω
2

+

λ
.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein ∥x∥ 1 is replaced with ∥Rx∥ p with p≧0 and R is a linear or nonlinear transform.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising applying a Cholesky decomposition, Ω=LL′, {tilde over (B)} L −1 B, {tilde over (z)} L −1 z, and enforcing an l 1 -norm penalty on polynomial coefficients yielding:

x
^

mSAP

=

arg
⁢

⁢
min

x

⁢



B
~

⁢
x

-

z
~



2
2

+

λ
.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein ∥x∥ 1 is replaced with ∥Rx∥ p with p≧0 and R is a linear or nonlinear transform.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein a correction map, {circumflex over (φ)} mSAP , is then obtained by {circumflex over (φ)} mSAP =A i {circumflex over (x)} mSAP , wherein A corresponds to the SOI.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein only one slice (SOI) is collected and processed to find the correction map.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein only additional slices are used to find the correction map for SOI.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the data from individual frames, before time-averaging, is used to construct B, z, {tilde over (B)}, and {tilde over (z)}.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein polynomials of different orders are used.

14. The method is claim 1 , wherein functions other than polynomial functions are used for fitting the background phase.

15. The method of claim 1 , further comprising constructing Ω in a sparse format by setting entries with small values equal to zero.

16. The method of claim 1 , further approximating Ω by setting all off-diagonal entries to zero.

17. The method of claim 1 , replacing Ω with the identity matrix and only considerin

Assignees

• Ohio State Innovation Foundation

Inventors

• Ahmad Rizwan
• Jin Ning
• Simonetti Orlando P

Classifications

• G01R33/56316 Primary

  involving phase contrast techniques · CPC title

• G06V10/42

  Global feature extraction by analysis of the whole pattern, e.g. using frequency domain transformations or autocorrelation · CPC title

• G06T12/10

  Image preprocessing, e.g. calibration, positioning of sources or scatter correction · CPC title

• G06T7/0042

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06T2207/10088

  Magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] · CPC title