Fast Iterative Reconstruction for MRI
In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) the raw data is measured in k-space, the domain of spatial frequencies. Methods that use a non-Cartesian (e.g. spiral) sampling grid in k-space are becoming increasingly important. Reconstruction is usually performed by resampling the data onto a Cartesian grid and use the standard Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT). This model is called gridding. Another approach, the inverse model, is based on an implicit discretisation. The gridding model is the explicit computation of the picture with given Fourier samples. The inverse model is the implicit computation.We solve both by using the NFFT 3.0 library. The NFFT 3.0 which includes the NFFT as well as the inverse NFFT can simply be used for both approaches.
From the MR Research Center at the University of Aarhus (Denmark) and from Philips Research (Hamburg, Germany) we got real-life data from a MRT scanner.
| data from a MRT scanner reconstructed data of Philips Research | data from a MRT scanner showing the heart of a pig |
| left picture shows the original phantom, right picture shows the reconstructed image |
For numerical results we used a 3-dimensional shepp-logan phantom as example. The left of the next pictures shows the original phantom of size 256*256*36. The right picture shows the image we reconstructed with an inverse NFFT after one iteration. Please click on the images to see all slices.
| Picture showing the original profile of the 128th row of the 18th slice | Picture showing the reconstructed phantom |
The next pictures show the profile of the 128th row of the 18th slice, left the original, right the reconstructed phantom.