A Direct Reconstruction Method for Blood Velocity Estimation from Phase-Contrast MRI Data

Rizwan Ahmad¹, Ning Jin, ¹², Yu Ding¹, Orlando P. Simonetti¹

The purpose of this work is to develop and validate a new approach to deriving blood velocity estimates from phase-contrast MRI data that improves temporal resolution and reduces artifacts without increasing acquisition time. The proposed method is based on the direct inversion of the forward model, where all measurements across time are jointly processed, pixel-by-pixel. Here, each measurement is correctly assumed to be acquired at a unique instant of time; this is a departure from the standard approach where each four consecutive measurements across time are processed together and treated as if they were acquired simultaneously.