Robust sliding‐window reconstruction for Accelerating the acquisition of MR fingerprinting

• Published in: Magnetic resonance in medicine Vol. 78; no. 4; pp. 1579 - 1588
• Main Authors: Cao, Xiaozhi, Liao, Congyu, Wang, Zhixing, Chen, Ying, Ye, Huihui, He, Hongjian, Zhong, Jianhui
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.10.2017
• Subjects: Algorithms; Brain - diagnostic imaging; Dictionaries; Fingerprinting; Fingerprints; Frames; Humans; Image contrast; Image processing; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods; Image quality; Image reconstruction; In vivo methods and tests; Magnetic resonance; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Matching; MR fingerprinting; Phantoms, Imaging; Proton density (concentration); Robustness; Sliding; sliding‐window reconstruction; spiral trajectory; Strategy; Windows (intervals); MR fingerprinting; sliding-window reconstruction; spiral trajectory
• ISSN: 0740-3194; 1522-2594
• DOI: 10.1002/mrm.26521

Purpose To develop a method for accelerated and robust MR fingerprinting (MRF) with improved image reconstruction and parameter matching processes. Theory and Methods A sliding‐window (SW) strategy was applied to MRF, in which signal and dictionary matching was conducted between fingerprints consisting of mixed‐contrast image series reconstructed from consecutive data frames segmented by a sliding window, and a precalculated mixed‐contrast dictionary. The effectiveness and performance of this new method, dubbed SW‐MRF, was evaluated in both phantom and in vivo. Error quantifications were conducted on results obtained with various settings of SW reconstruction parameters. Results Compared with the original MRF strategy, the results of both phantom and in vivo experiments demonstrate that the proposed SW‐MRF strategy either provided similar accuracy with reduced acquisition time, or improved accuracy with equal acquisition time. Parametric maps of T1, T2, and proton density of comparable quality could be achieved with a two‐fold or more reduction in acquisition time. The effect of sliding‐window width on dictionary sensitivity was also estimated. Conclusion The novel SW‐MRF recovers high quality image frames from highly undersampled MRF data, which enables more robust dictionary matching with reduced numbers of data frames. This time efficiency may facilitate MRF applications in time‐critical clinical settings. Magn Reson Med 78:1579–1588, 2017. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.