No Arabic abstract
Quantitative MR imaging is increasingly favoured for its richer information content and standardised measures. However, computing quantitative parameter maps, such as those encoding longitudinal relaxation rate (R1), apparent transverse relaxation rate (R2*) or magnetisation-transfer saturation (MTsat), involves inverting a highly non-linear function. Many methods for deriving parameter maps assume perfect measurements and do not consider how noise is propagated through the estimation procedure, resulting in needlessly noisy maps. Instead, we propose a probabilistic generative (forward) model of the entire dataset, which is formulated and inverted to jointly recover (log) parameter maps with a well-defined probabilistic interpretation (e.g., maximum likelihood or maximum a posteriori). The second order optimisation we propose for model fitting achieves rapid and stable convergence thanks to a novel approximate Hessian. We demonstrate the utility of our flexible framework in the context of recovering more accurate maps from data acquired using the popular multi-parameter mapping protocol. We also show how to incorporate a joint total variation prior to further decrease the noise in the maps, noting that the probabilistic formulation allows the uncertainty on the recovered parameter maps to be estimated. Our implementation uses a PyTorch backend and benefits from GPU acceleration. It is available at https://github.com/balbasty/nitorch.
In this paper, we present a novel tone mapping algorithm that can be used for displaying wide dynamic range (WDR) images on low dynamic range (LDR) devices. The proposed algorithm is mainly motivated by the logarithmic response and local adaptation features of the human visual system (HVS). HVS perceives luminance differently when under different adaptation levels, and therefore our algorithm uses functions built upon different scales to tone map pixels to different values. Functions of large scales are used to maintain image brightness consistency and functions of small scales are used to preserve local detail and contrast. An efficient method using local variance has been proposed to fuse the values of different scales and to remove artifacts. The algorithm utilizes integral images and integral histograms to reduce computation complexity and processing time. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can generate high brightness, good contrast, and appealing images that surpass the performance of many state-of-the-art tone mapping algorithms. This project is available at https://github.com/jieyang1987/ToneMapping-Based-on-Multi-scale-Histogram-Synthesis.
Histology review is often used as the `gold standard for disease diagnosis. Computer aided diagnosis tools can potentially help improve current pathology workflows by reducing examination time and interobserver variability. Previous work in cancer grading has focused mainly on classifying pre-defined regions of interest (ROIs), or relied on large amounts of fine-grained labels. In this paper, we propose a two-stage attention-based multiple instance learning model for slide-level cancer grading and weakly-supervised ROI detection and demonstrate its use in prostate cancer. Compared with existing Gleason classification models, our model goes a step further by utilizing visualized saliency maps to select informative tiles for fine-grained grade classification. The model was primarily developed on a large-scale whole slide dataset consisting of 3,521 prostate biopsy slides with only slide-level labels from 718 patients. The model achieved state-of-the-art performance for prostate cancer grading with an accuracy of 85.11% for classifying benign, low-grade (Gleason grade 3+3 or 3+4), and high-grade (Gleason grade 4+3 or higher) slides on an independent test set.
Purpose: To develop a single-shot multi-slice T1 mapping method by combing simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) excitations, single-shot inversion-recovery (IR) radial fast low-angle shot (FLASH) and a nonlinear model-based reconstruction method. Methods: SMS excitations are combined with a single-shot IR radial FLASH sequence for data acquisition. A previously developed single-slice calibrationless model-based reconstruction is extended to SMS, formulating the estimation of parameter maps and coil sensitivities from all slices as a single nonlinear inverse problem. Joint-sparsity constraints are further applied to the parameter maps to improve T1 precision. Validations of the proposed method are performed for a phantom and for the human brain and liver in six healthy adult subjects. Results: Phantom results confirm good T1 accuracy and precision of the simultaneously acquired multi-slice T1 maps in comparison to single-slice references. In-vivo human brain studies demonstrate the better performance of SMS acquisitions compared to the conventional spoke-interleaved multi-slice acquisition using model-based reconstruction. Apart from good accuracy and precision, the results of six healthy subjects in both brain and abdominal studies confirm good repeatability between scan and re-scans. The proposed method can simultaneously acquire T1 maps for five slices of a human brain ($0.75 times 0.75 times 5$ mm$^3$) or three slices of the abdomen ($1.25 times 1.25 times 6$ mm$^3$) within four seconds. Conclusion: The IR SMS radial FLASH acquisition together with a non-linear model-based reconstruction enable rapid high-resolution multi-slice T1 mapping with good accuracy, precision, and repeatability.
Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF) enables the simultaneous quantification of multiple properties of biological tissues. It relies on a pseudo-random acquisition and the matching of acquired signal evolutions to a precomputed dictionary. However, the dictionary is not scalable to higher-parametric spaces, limiting MRF to the simultaneous mapping of only a small number of parameters (proton density, T1 and T2 in general). Inspired by diffusion-weighted SSFP imaging, we present a proof-of-concept of a novel MRF sequence with embedded diffusion-encoding gradients along all three axes to efficiently encode orientational diffusion and T1 and T2 relaxation. We take advantage of a convolutional neural network (CNN) to reconstruct multiple quantitative maps from this single, highly undersampled acquisition. We bypass expensive dictionary matching by learning the implicit physical relationships between the spatiotemporal MRF data and the T1, T2 and diffusion tensor parameters. The predicted parameter maps and the derived scalar diffusion metrics agree well with state-of-the-art reference protocols. Orientational diffusion information is captured as seen from the estimated primary diffusion directions. In addition to this, the joint acquisition and reconstruction framework proves capable of preserving tissue abnormalities in multiple sclerosis lesions.
Quantitative MRI methods that estimate multiple physical parameters simultaneously often require the fitting of a computational complex signal model defined through the Bloch equations. Repeated Bloch simulations can be avoided by matching the measured signal with a precomputed signal dictionary on a discrete parameter grid, as used in MR Fingerprinting. However, accurate estimation requires discretizing each parameter with a high resolution and consequently high computational and memory costs for dictionary generation, storage, and matching. Here, we reduce the required parameter resolution by approximating the signal between grid points through B-spline interpolation. The interpolant and its gradient are evaluated efficiently which enables a least-squares fitting method for parameter mapping. The resolution of each parameter was minimized while obtaining a user-specified interpolation accuracy. The method was evaluated by phantom and in-vivo experiments using fully-sampled and undersampled unbalanced (FISP) MR fingerprinting acquisitions. Bloch simulations incorporated relaxation effects ($T_1,T_2$), proton density ($PD$), receiver phase ($phi_0$), transmit field inhomogeneity ($B_1^+$), and slice profile. Parameter maps were compared with those obtained from dictionary matching, where the parameter resolution was chosen to obtain similar signal (interpolation) accuracy. For both the phantom and the in-vivo acquisition, the proposed method approximated the parameter maps obtained through dictionary matching while reducing the parameter resolution in each dimension ($T_1,T_2,B_1^+$) by, on average, an order of magnitude. In effect, the applied dictionary was reduced from 1.47 GB to 464 KB. Dictionary fitting with B-spline interpolation reduces the computational and memory costs of dictionary-based methods and is therefore a promising method for multi-parametric mapping.