Work

Improved motion correction using image registration based on variational synthetic image estimation: application to inline t1 mapping of myocardium

Year: 2011

Type: article

Abstract: Myocardial T1 mapping has potential to quantify structural and pathological changes without use of contrast agent. Recently Modified Look-Locker Inversion Recovery (MOLLI) sequence has proven effective on cardiac T1 mapping [ 1 ]. Its clinical applicability is still limited by myocardial motion between frames mainly due to beat to beat variations and respiration. This undesired motion compromises the accuracy of pixel-by-pixel T1 estimation. Unfortunately, registration of MOLLI images is particularly difficult as image contrast changes significantly over time (Figure 1 ). A simple frame-to-frame registration often fails with unrealistic deformation. In this work, we propose a novel registration algorithm based on estimating motion-free synthetic images presenting similar contrast to original data by solving a variational energy minimization problem. Robust motion correction is achieved by registering synthetic images to corresponding MOLLI frames.

Source: Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance

DOI: 10.1186/1532-429x-13-s1-p21