Purpose
Amplified MRI (aMRI) has been introduced as a new method of detecting and visualizing pulsatile brain motion in 2D. Here, we improve aMRI by introducing a novel 3D aMRI approach.
Methods
3D aMRI was developed and tested for its ability to amplify sub‐voxel motion in all three directions. In addition, 3D aMRI was qualitatively compared to 2D aMRI on multi‐slice and 3D (volumetric) balanced steady‐state free precession cine data and phase contrast (PC‐MRI) acquired on healthy volunteers at 3T. Optical flow maps and 4D animations were produced from volumetric 3D aMRI data.
Results
3D aMRI exhibits better image quality and fewer motion artifacts compared to 2D aMRI. The tissue motion was seen to match that of PC‐MRI, with the predominant brain tissue displacement occurring in the cranial‐caudal direction. Optical flow maps capture the brain tissue motion and display the physical change in shape of the ventricles by the relative movement of the surrounding tissues. The 4D animations show the complete brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) motion, helping to highlight the “piston‐like” motion of the ventricles.
Conclusions
Here, we introduce a novel 3D aMRI approach that enables one to visualize amplified cardiac‐ and CSF‐induced brain motion in striking detail. 3D aMRI captures brain motion with better image quality than 2D aMRI and supports a larger amplification factor. The optical flow maps and 4D animations of 3D aMRI may open up exciting applications for neurological diseases that affect the biomechanics of the brain and brain fluids.
In this paper we introduce a new method for the registration between preoperative and intraoperative computerized tomography (CT) images used in endovascular interventions for aortic aneurysm repair. The method relies on a 3D finite-element model (FEM) of the aortic centerline reconstructed from preoperative CT scans. Intraoperative 2D fluoroscopic images are used to deform the 3D FEM and align it onto the current aortic geometry. The method was evaluated on clinical datasets for which a reference CT scan was available to evaluate the registration errors made by our method and to compare them with other registration methods based on rigid transformations. Errors were estimated based on the predicted locations of landmarks positioned at different branch ostia. It appeared that our method always reduced the registration errors of at least 20% compared to gold standard 3D rigid registration and permitted to reach a global precision of 3.8 mm and a renal precision of 2.6 mm, which is a significant improvement compatible with surgical specifications. Finally, the major asset of our method is that it only requires one fluoroscopic intraoperative 2D image to perform the 3D non-rigid registration. This would reduce patient irradiation and cut the costs compared to traditional methods.
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