Motion compensated generalized reconstruction for free‐breathing dynamic contrast‐enhanced MRI

Abstract

Abstract The analysis of abdominal and thoracic dynamic contrast‐enhanced MRI is often impaired by artifacts and misregistration caused by physiological motion. Breath‐hold is too short to cover long acquisitions. A novel multipurpose reconstruction technique, entitled dynamic contrast‐enhanced generalized reconstruction by inversion of coupled systems, is presented. It performs respiratory motion compensation in terms of both motion artefact correction and registration. It comprises motion modeling and contrast‐change modeling. The method feeds on physiological signals and x ‐ f space properties of dynamic series to invert a coupled system of linear equations. The unknowns solved for represent the parameters for a linear nonrigid motion model and the parameters for a linear contrast‐change model based on B‐splines. Performance is demonstrated on myocardial perfusion imaging, on six simulated data sets and six clinical exams. The main purpose consists in removing motion‐induced errors from time–intensity curves, thus improving curve analysis and postprocessing in general. This method alleviates postprocessing difficulties in dynamic contrast‐enhanced MRI and opens new possibilities for dynamic contrast‐enhanced MRI analysis. Magn Reson Med, 2011. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.