Super-Resolution in Diffusion-Weighted Imaging

Abstract.

Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) enables non-invasive investigation and characterization of the white-matter but is strongly limited by the relatively poor resolution achievable. Increasing the resolution in DWI holds out the potential to reveal and investigate novel finer fiber structures not visible with conventional diffusion MRI, and will enable a more accurate white-matter and brain connectivity assessment.

Here we investigate a super-resolution reconstruction (SRR) technique based on the acquisition of multiple anisotropic orthogonal DWI scans. The SRR is formulated as a maximum a posteriori (MAP) problem. It relies on a volume acquisition model and enables introduction of image priors.

srr

SRR techniques are of great interest for medical imaging because they are complimentary to other resolution enhancement techniques, and enable us to go beyond the limits dictated by the hardware. With today's scanners, they may enable routine HR investigation of the brain white-matter in clinically compatible scan time. Combined with future MRI hardware improvements, they may enable DWI to be performed with unprecedented resolution.

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Selected related publications


Scherrer B, Gholipour A, Warfield SK,  Super-resolution reconstruction to increase the spatial resolution of diffusion weighted images from orthogonal anisotropic acquisitions,  Med Imag Analysis,  16(7),  2012,  1465-1476,  PMID22770597,  PMC3448812,  NIHMS388656
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Elsevier/MEDIA Best Paper Award 2012 : link, cache
10th MEDIA Hottest Article in 2012 : link, cache
Scherrer B, Afacan O, Taquet M, Prabhu SP, Gholipour A, Warfield SK,  Accelerated High Spatial Resolution Diffusion-Weighted Imaging,  Proc. of the 24th Int Conf Inf Process Med Imaging (IPMI),  LNCS 9123,  Isle of Skye, Scotland, UK,  2015,  69-81,  PMID26167096,  PMC4495974
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Scherrer B, Gholipour A, Afacan O, Prabhu SP, Warfield SK,  Accelerated Motion-Robust Non-Cartesian Multi-Shot Diffusion-Weighted Imaging with Reconstruction in the Image Space,  Proc. the 23th International Symposium on Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM),  Toronto, Canada,  2015
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Scherrer B, Gholipour A, Warfield SK,  Super-Resolution Reconstruction of Diffusion-Weighted Images from Distortion Compensated Orthogonal Anisotropic Acquisitions,  Proc. of the 12th IEEE Workshop on Mathematical Methods in Biomedical Image Analysis (MMBIA),  Breckenridge, USA,  2012,  249-256
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Scherrer B, Gholipour A, Warfield SK,  Increasing the resolution of diffusion-weighted MRI with distortion compensated orthogonal acquisitions and super-resolution reconstruction,  Proc. the 20th International Symposium on Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM),  Melbourne, Australia,  2012
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ISMRM Magna Cum Laude Merit Award
Scherrer B, Gholipour A, Warfield SK,  Super-Resolution in Diffusion-Weighted Imaging,  Proc. of the 14th Int Conf Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv (MICCAI),  14(2),  Toronto, Canada,  2011,  124-132,  PMID21995021,  PMC3687082,  NIHMS475056
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Gholipour A, Kehtarnavaz N, Scherrer B, Warfield SK,  On the Accuracy of Unwarping Techniques for the Correction of Susceptibility-Induced Geometric Distortion in Magnetic Resonance Echo-Planar Images,  Proc. of the 33rd Annual International IEEE EMBS Conference,  Boston, USA,  2011,  PMID22255949,  PMC3675776,  NIHMS478435
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