Frederik J. de Bruijn1, Yan Zhang1,2, Andr M. Sprengers3, Aart J. Nederveen3, Jaap Stoker3, Rolf M. Lamerichs1
1Philips Research, Eindhoven,
Netherlands; 2Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, Leiden
University, Leiden, Netherlands; 3Department of Radiology, Academic
Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Abdominal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is complicated by tissue motion as well as by weak tissue contrast. The major source of motion is respiration, which can be dealt with by breath-hold imaging or by respiratory triggering. Nevertheless, these commonly used methods are known to have their limitations in terms of patient burden as well as in image quality. We propose a method that allows 3-dimensional (3D) motion-compensated imaging of the bowel in the presence of continued respiratory motion and normal bowel peristalsis. The method is based on a computationally efficient spatiotemporal recursive search cube matching algorithm which allows accurate real-time volumetric motion estimation and compensation for the respiratory motion. We are currently evaluating the application to motion-compensated reconstruction of dynamic contrast-enhanced data of the colon.
Keywords