Anisotropic total variation minimization approach in in-line phase-contrast tomography and its application to correction of ring artifacts

In-line phase-contrast computed tomography(IL-PC-CT) imaging is a new physical and biochemical imaging method.IL-PC-CT has advantages compared to absorption CT when imaging soft tissues. In practical applications, ring artifacts which will reduce the image quality are commonly encountered in IL-PC-CT, and numerous correction methods exist to either pre-process the sinogram or post-process the reconstructed image. In this study, we develop an IL-PC-CT reconstruction method based on anisotropic total variation(TV) minimization. Using this method, the ring artifacts are corrected during the reconstruction process. This method is compared with two methods: a sinogram preprocessing correction technique based on wavelet-FFT filter and a reconstruction method based on isotropic TV. The correction results show that the proposed method can reduce visible ring artifacts while preserving the liver section details for real liver section synchrotron data.     

数据插值对正电子发射断层成像设备的图像重建影响的研究

正电子发射断层扫描(positron emission computed tomography, PET)是核医学领域最先进的临床检查影像技术. PET技术是目前临床上用于诊断和指导治疗肿瘤的最佳手段之一. 正电子发射断层成像设备探测器采集到的数据需要进行数据处理, 把原始数据转换成正弦图形式的数据才能用于图像重建. 平行束断层重建和扇形束图像重建是图像重建的两种方法, 分别对应平行束和扇形束形式的数据处理方法. 对原始数据的操作不可避免地破坏了原始数据的完整性. 现今, 正电子发射断层设备在重建过程中普遍采用平行束重建的方法. 平行束的数据分离会对PET数据进行插值操作, 扇形束的数据分离不会对PET数据进行插值操作. 本文通过对比平行束图像重建和扇形束图像重建结果, 研究了数据插值对PET图像重建结果的影响. 关键词： 正电子发射计算机断层扫描 数据插值 图像重建 原始数据     

A statistical iteration approach with energy minimization to sinogram noise reduction for low-dose X-ray CT

Low-dose CT imaging has been particularly used in modern medical practice for its advantage on reducing the radiation dose to patients. However, excessive quantum noise is present in low dose X-ray imaging along with the decrease of the radiation dose; thus, there are obvious streak-like artifacts in reconstructed images. The statistical iterative reconstruction approach applied to the noisy sinogram before a filtered back-projection (FBP) is a resolution to deal with the noisy problem. In this paper, the statistical property of the noise sinogram was considered to achieve a satisfactory image reconstruction and a statistical iterative method with energy minimization was proposed to address the problem of streak-like artifacts. Simulations were performed and indicated that the proposed method could suppress noise and obviously decrease streak-like artifacts in reconstructed images.     

The adaptive sinogram restoration algorithm based on anisotropic diffusion by energy minimization for low-dose X-ray CT

Apparent streak artifacts will present in reconstructed images due to excessive quantum noise in low-dose X-ray imaging process. Estimating a noise-free sinogram to satisfy the filtered back-projection (FBP) reconstruction is an effective way to solve this problem. In this paper, we propose a novel sinogram noise reduction method by energy minimization. An adaptive smoothness parameter based on a modified anisotropic diffusion coefficient is applied for an optimal estimation. The smoothness parameter can make the method effectively adjust the degree of smoothness according to the noise level and the region feature in the sinogram. Visual effect together with quantitative analysis of the experimental result shows the developed approach has the excellent performance in protection of the edge and removal of streak artifacts in the reconstructed image.     

Compression and reconstruction of MRI images using 2D DCT.

In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the original data are sampled in the spatial frequency domain. The sampled data thus constitute a set of discrete Fourier transform (DFT) coefficients. The image is usually reconstructed by taking inverse DFT. The image data may then be compressed using the discrete cosine transform (DCT). We present here a method of treating the data that combines two procedures, image reconstruction and data compression. This method may be particularly useful in medical picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) where both image reconstruction and compression are important issues.     

Dictionary learning based sinogram inpainting for CT sparse reconstruction

In CT (computed tomography), reconstruction from undersampling projection data is often ill-posed and suffers from severe artifact in the reconstructed images. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a sinogram inpainting method based on recently rising sparse representation technology. In this approach, a dictionary learning based inpainting is used to estimate the missing projection data. The final image can be reconstructed by the analytic filtered back projection (FBP) reconstruction. We conduct experiments using both simulated and real phantom data. Compared to the comparative interpolation method, visual and numerical results validate the clinical potential of the proposed method.     

IKWI-net: A cross-domain convolutional neural network for undersampled magnetic resonance image reconstruction

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is widely used to get the information of anatomical structure and physiological function with the advantages of high resolution and non-invasive scanning. But the long acquisition time limits its application. To reduce the time consumption of MRI, compressed sensing (CS) theory has been proposed to reconstruct MRI images from undersampled k-space data. But conventional CS methods mostly use iterative methods that take lots of time. Recently, deep learning methods are proposed to achieve faster reconstruction, but most of them only pay attention to a single domain, such as the image domain or k-space. To take advantage of the feature representation in different domains, we propose a cross-domain method based on deep learning, which first uses convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in the image domain, k-space and wavelet domain simultaneously. The combined order of the three domains is also first studied in this work, which has a significant effect on reconstruction. The proposed IKWI-net achieves the best performance in various combinations, which utilizes CNNs in the image domain, k-space, wavelet domain and image domain sequentially. Compared with several deep learning methods, experiments show it also achieves mean improvements of 0.91 dB in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and 0.005 in structural similarity (SSIM).     

Evaluation of motion effects on parallel MR imaging with precalibration

Several parallel imaging techniques such as SMASH, SENSE, k-space inherited parallel acquisition (KIPA) and others use reference (calibration) scans to find the parameters required for image reconstruction. Reference data is used to estimate coil sensitivity profiles for image domain techniques such as SENSE or reconstruction coefficients for k-space domain methods such as SMASH and KIPA. Any motion between the reference and accelerated imaging scans can make the reconstruction coefficients determined from the reference scan data suboptimal, resulting in an artifactual reconstruction. This work aims at comparing the effects of motion on the performance of three parallel imaging methods: SENSE, variable-density SENSE and KIPA, which all require one or more reference scans for calibration.     

Nuclear norm-regularized SENSE reconstruction

SENSitivity Encoding (SENSE) is a mathematically optimal parallel magnetic resonance (MRI) imaging technique when the coil sensitivities are known. In recent times, compressed sensing (CS)-based techniques are incorporated within the SENSE reconstruction framework to recover the underlying MR image. CS-based techniques exploit the fact that the MR images are sparse in a transform domain (e.g., wavelets). Mathematically, this leads to an l(1)-norm-regularized SENSE reconstruction. In this work, we show that instead of reconstructing the image by exploiting its transform domain sparsity, we can exploit its rank deficiency to reconstruct it. This leads to a nuclear norm-regularized SENSE problem. The reconstruction accuracy from our proposed method is the same as the l(1)-norm-regularized SENSE, but the advantage of our method is that it is about an order of magnitude faster.     

Sparse MRI reconstruction using multi-contrast image guided graph representation

Accelerating the imaging speed without sacrificing image structures plays an important role in magnetic resonance imaging. Under-sampling the k-space data and reconstructing the image with sparsity constraint is one efficient way to reduce the data acquisition time. However, achieving high acceleration factor is challenging since image structures may be lost or blurred when the acquired information is not sufficient. Therefore, incorporating extra knowledge to improve image reconstruction is expected for highly accelerated imaging. Fortunately, multi-contrast images in the same region of interest are usually acquired in magnetic resonance imaging protocols. In this work, we propose a new approach to reconstruct magnetic resonance images by learning the prior knowledge from these multi-contrast images with graph-based wavelet representations. We further formulate the reconstruction as a bi-level optimization problem to allow misalignment between these images. Experiments on realistic imaging datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach improves the image reconstruction significantly and is practical for real world application since patients are unnecessarily to stay still during successive reference image scans.     

CT图像“条状”伪影校正方法研究

在CT重建中,当断层射线衰减系数的变化呈非连续性的跳跃变化,如一种材质密度远远大于另一种材质的密度时,CT图像中高密度物质周围就会产生条状伪影。利用重投影技术分别获取高密度物质和低密度物质的正弦图,低密度物质正弦图中的数据缺失区用线性插值技术进行平滑过渡。利用两幅正弦图分别进行CT重建,然后将两幅CT图像进行相加,得到校正后的图像。实验结果表明,该方法能有效抑制条状伪影,同时提高了图像对比度。     

即时/准即时u-v覆盖的光学综合孔径成像分析

介绍了即时/准即时u-v覆盖的光学综合孔径成像技术实时/准实时观测的优点,并以LBT为实例进行了成像分析.对LBT采用快速傅里叶变换、卷积与反卷积算法获得系统的点扩展函数(PSF)与光学传递函数(OTF);探讨了全局传递函数及其对成像效果的影响,说明了即时/准即时u-v覆盖成像特性;用实验仿真的方法验证了全局传递函数在满足准即时u-v覆盖成像的要求情况下能够对天体目标进行较好的图像恢复.     

Noise reduction for low-dose X-ray CT based on fuzzy logical in stationary wavelet domain

Apparent streak-like artifacts will present in reconstructed images due to excessive quantum noise in low-dose X-ray imaging process. Dealing with the noisy sinogram before a filtered back-projection (FBP) is a useful solution to solve this noise problem. In this paper, we proposed a novel noise restoration method combining wavelet and fuzzy logical technology for low-dose computed tomography (CT) sinogram. The method first utilizes stationary wavelet transform on the noisy sinogram, namely decomposes the sinogram to different resolution levels. And then, at each decomposed resolution level, a fuzzy shrinkage filter is applied to restore the noise-contaminated wavelet coefficients. Simulations were performed and indicated that the proposed method could significantly suppress noise and reduced streak-like artifacts in reconstructed images while at the same time maintaining the image sharpness.     

三种降采样成像策略的性能优化以及与传统傅里叶望远镜的比较

为了获得成像质量较好且成像时间较少的新型傅里叶望远镜成像策略,本文比较了三种降采样成像策略(压缩感知方法 (CS)、低频全采样方法 (LF)和变密度随机采样方法 (VD))与传统傅里叶望远镜(FT)在图像质量和成像时间上的差异.分析方法如下:利用传统FT外场实验所获得的目标频谱数据作为基础,三种降采样方法 (LF, VD和CS)分别按照各自的采样模式和重构方法实现目标图像的重构;通过直观观察和Strehl比两种方法比较三种降采样方法与传统FT在图像质量上的差异;通过分析成像时间的组成要素,初步比较三种降采样方法与传统FT在成像时间上的差异.分析表明:1)压缩感知方法的图像质量优于其他两种降采样方法 (LF和VD),但略低于传统成像结果; 2)压缩感知方法在成像质量上略低于传统FT,但在成像时间上却明显小于传统FT; 3)分析中采用的外场数据均含噪声,这说明上述三种降采样重构过程对噪声有较好的鲁棒性.综合上述分析结果可以看出,基于压缩感知的傅里叶望远镜(CS-FT)是在实际含噪情况下可大幅减少成像时间的优良成像策略.     

Sparsity-constrained SENSE reconstruction: An efficient implementation using a fast composite splitting algorithm

Parallel imaging and compressed sensing have been arguably the most successful and widely used techniques for fast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Recent studies have shown that the combination of these two techniques is useful for solving the inverse problem of recovering the image from highly under-sampled k-space data. In sparsity-enforced sensitivity encoding (SENSE) reconstruction, the optimization problem involves data fidelity (L2-norm) constraint and a number of L1-norm regularization terms (i.e. total variation or TV, and L1 norm). This makes the optimization problem difficult to solve due to the non-smooth nature of the regularization terms. In this paper, to effectively solve the sparsity-regularized SENSE reconstruction, we utilize a new optimization method, called fast composite splitting algorithm (FCSA), which was developed for compressed sensing MRI. By using a combination of variable splitting and operator splitting techniques, the FCSA algorithm decouples the large optimization problem into TV and L1 sub-problems, which are then, solved efficiently using existing fast methods. The operator splitting separates the smooth terms from the non-smooth terms, so that both terms are treated in an efficient manner. The final solution to the SENSE reconstruction is obtained by weighted solutions to the sub-problems through an iterative optimization procedure. The FCSA-based parallel MRI technique is tested on MR brain image reconstructions at various acceleration rates and with different sampling trajectories. The results indicate that, for sparsity-regularized SENSE reconstruction, the FCSA-based method is capable of achieving significant improvements in reconstruction accuracy when compared with the state-of-the-art reconstruction method.     

Calibration-less multi-coil MR image reconstruction

In parallel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the problem is to reconstruct an image given the partial K-space scans from all the receiver coils. Depending on its position within the scanner, each coil has a different sensitivity profile. All existing parallel MRI techniques require estimation of certain parameters pertaining to the sensitivity profile, e.g., the sensitivity map needs to be estimated for the SENSE and SMASH and the interpolation weights need to be calibrated for GRAPPA and SPIRiT. The assumption is that the estimated parameters are applicable at the operational stage. This assumption does not always hold, consequently the reconstruction accuracies of existing parallel MRI methods may suffer. We propose a reconstruction method called Calibration-Less Multi-coil (CaLM) MRI. As the name suggests, our method does not require estimation of any parameters related to the sensitivity maps and hence does not require a calibration stage. CaLM MRI is an image domain method that produces a sensitivity encoded image for each coil. These images are finally combined by the sum-of-squares method to yield the final image. It is based on the theory of Compressed Sensing (CS). During reconstruction, the constraint that "all the coil images should appear similar" is introduced within the CS framework. This leads to a CS optimization problem that promotes group-sparsity. The results from our proposed method are comparable (at least for the data used in this work) with the best results that can be obtained from state-of-the-art methods.     

时域压缩合成孔径超分辨水声成像算法

提出一种针对水下稀疏目标的时域压缩合成孔径声呐成像方法(TC-SAS),实现了水声目标高分辨实时成像。通过多子阵的孔径合成,在时域上构造出成像网格格点到有效孔径内逐帧阵列的格林函数,并给出成像区域散射强度到数据域的映射矩阵;然后利用该区域空域稀疏的先验知识,通过正交匹配追踪的稀疏重构方式,解算出成像区域散射系数矩阵,实现了稀疏目标高分辨成像.同时,针对线性调频信号提出数据缩减的方法,通过对观测数据和字典矩阵同时脉压后截取,减小了数据规模;进一步结合二维矩阵数表查表的方法,以空间换时间,实现了区块实时成像。数值仿真以及湖试试验表明,所提算法能分辨出传统的时延求和算法难以分辨的目标,并且在图像清晰度指标上平均提升4.9 dB.改善了合成孔径声呐的成像质量.      

干涉型计算层析成像光谱仪的图像重建

针对干涉型计算层析成像光谱仪(CTII)提出了一种光谱图像数据立方体的重建方法。干涉型计算层析成像光谱仪是一种将空间调制傅里叶变换成像光谱仪(FTIS)的原理与计算层析成像光谱仪(CTIS)的原理相结合的一种新型成像光谱仪,具有高通量、高光谱分辨力以及高空间分辨力的特点。分析和讨论了干涉型计算层析成像光谱仪的工作原理以及获取图像的特征,介绍了光谱图像数据立方体的重建方法。根据多角度投影数据的特点提出采用卷积反投影计算层析成像图像重建算法,给出了图像重建步骤以及相应的数学表达式。对D65光源照明条件下的396×396像素目标进行了仿真实验,投影角度为0~180°,步长为0.5°,列出了仿真实验部分结果。实验结果验证了干涉型计算层析成像光谱仪及其图像重建算法的可行性。     

Compressed sensing MR image reconstruction using a motion-compensated reference

Compressed sensing (CS)-based methods have been proposed for image reconstruction from undersampled magnetic resonance data. Recently, CS-based schemes using reference images have also been proposed to further reduce the sampling requirement. In this study, we propose a new reference-constrained CS reconstruction method that accounts for the misalignment between the reference and the target image to be reconstructed. The proposed method uses a new image model that represents the target image as a linear combination of a motion-dependent reference image and a sparse difference image. We then use an efficient iterative algorithm to jointly estimate the motion parameters and the difference image from sparsely sampled data. Simulation results from a numerical phantom data set and an in vivo data set show that the proposed method can accurately compensate the motion effects between the reference and the target images and improve reconstruction quality. The proposed method should prove useful for several applications such as interventional imaging, longitudinal imaging studies and dynamic contrast-enhanced imaging.     

Visually weighted reconstruction of compressive sensing MRI

Compressive sensing (CS) enables the reconstruction of a magnetic resonance (MR) image from undersampled data in k-space with relatively low-quality distortion when compared to the original image. In addition, CS allows the scan time to be significantly reduced. Along with a reduction in the computational overhead, we investigate an effective way to improve visual quality through the use of a weighted optimization algorithm for reconstruction after variable density random undersampling in the phase encoding direction over k-space. In contrast to conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reconstruction methods, the visual weight, in particular, the region of interest (ROI), is investigated here for quality improvement. In addition, we employ a wavelet transform to analyze the reconstructed image in the space domain and fully utilize data sparsity over the spatial and frequency domains. The visual weight is constructed by reflecting the perceptual characteristics of the human visual system (HVS), and then applied to ?₁ norm minimization, which gives priority to each coefficient during the reconstruction process. Using objective quality assessment metrics, it was found that an image reconstructed using the visual weight has higher local and global quality than those processed by conventional methods.