fMRI artifacts reduction using Bayesian image processing

• Published in: 1998 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record. 1998 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (Cat. No.98CH36255) Vol. 3; pp. 1868 - 1872 vol.3
• Main Authors: Kim, T., Al-Dayeh, L., Singh, M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 1998
• Subjects: Bayesian methods; Fluctuations; Image processing; Image registration; Magnetic heads; Magnetic noise; Magnetic resonance imaging; Magnetic separation; Magnetic susceptibility; Noise reduction
• ISBN: 9780780350212; 0780350219
• ISSN: 1082-3654; 2577-0829
• DOI: 10.1109/NSSMIC.1998.773900

Functional MRI is known to be prone to artifacts caused by spatio-temporally varying structural noise components such as gross head motion, CSF pulsation, physiological fluctuation, and magnetic susceptibility changes. The presence of these artifacts can cause negative and positive false activation and obscure true activated pixels. Thus the reliability of the functional images can be diminished. The application of image registration or noise filtering can reduce artifacts related to motion and physiological pulsation, but cannot correct the locally differing spatial variations in T2* signal loss and the image distortions due to off-resonance effects. In our work, Bayesian image processing is applied to reduce noise and artifacts and to enhance true activity detection. The results indicate that Bayesian processing is effective in reducing fMRI noise and artifacts and in improving true activity detection by enhancing the connectivity of the activated pixels.