Imaging speed is very important in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), especially in dynamic cardiac applications, which involve respiratory motion and heart motion. With the introduction of reduced-data MR imaging methods, increasing acquisition speed has become possible without requiring a higher gradient system. But these reduced-data imaging methods carry a price for higher imaging speed. This may be a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) penalty, reduced resolution, or a combination of both. Many methods sacrifice edge information in favor of SNR gain, which is not preferable for applications which require accurate detection of myocardial boundaries. The central goal of this thesis is to develop novel reduced-data imaging methods to improve reconstructed image performance. This thesis presents a novel reduced-data imaging method, PINOT (Parallel Imaging and NOquist in Tandem), to accelerate MR imaging. As illustrated by a variety of computer simulated and real cardiac MRI data experiments, PINOT preserves the edge details, with flexibility of improving SNR by regularization. Another contribution is to exploit the data redundancy from parallel imaging, rFOV and partial Fourier methods. A Gerchberg Reduced Iterative System (GRIS), implemented with the Gerchberg-Papoulis (GP) iterative algorithm is introduced. Under the GRIS, which utilizes a temporal band-limitation constraint in the image reconstruction, a variant of Noquist called iterative implementation iNoquist (iterative Noquist) is proposed. Utilizing a different source of prior information, first combining iNoquist and Partial Fourier technique (phase-constrained iNoquist) and further integrating with parallel imaging methods (PINOT-GRIS) are presented to achieve additional acceleration gains.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:GATECH/oai:smartech.gatech.edu:1853/42707 |
| Date | 11 August 2011 |
| Creators | Hamilton, Lei Hou |
| Publisher | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | Georgia Tech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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