Blind multirigid retrospective motion correction of MR images.
OBJECTIVE
Physiological nonrigid motion is inevitable when imaging, e.g., abdominal viscera, and can lead to serious deterioration of the image quality. Prospective techniques for motion correction can handle only special types of nonrigid motion, as they only allow global correction. Retrospective methods developed so far need guidance from navigator sequences or external sensors. We propose a fully retrospective nonrigid motion correction scheme that only needs raw data as an input.


METHODS
Our method is based on a forward model that describes the effects of nonrigid motion by partitioning the image into patches with locally rigid motion. Using this forward model, we construct an objective function that we can optimize with respect to both unknown motion parameters per patch and the underlying sharp image.


RESULTS
We evaluate our method on both synthetic and real data in 2D and 3D. In vivo data was acquired using standard imaging sequences. The correction algorithm significantly improves the image quality. Our compute unified device architecture (CUDA)-enabled graphic processing unit implementation ensures feasible computation times.


CONCLUSIONS
The presented technique is the first computationally feasible retrospective method that uses the raw data of standard imaging sequences, and allows to correct for nonrigid motion without guidance from external motion sensors.
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Empirical Inference Department, Tübingen, Germany.
Alexander
A
Loktyushin
Hannes
H
Nickisch
Rolf
R
Pohmann
Bernhard
B
Schölkopf
D000465:Algorithms; D016477:Artifacts; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006225:Hand / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008954:Models, Biological; D009038:Motion; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
autofocusing; gradient-based optimization; graphic processing unit; nonrigid motion; retrospective motion correction