One of the technical challenges in cine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is to reduce the acquisition time to enable the high spatio-temporal resolution imaging of a cardiac volume within a short scan time. Recently, compressed sensing approaches have been investigated extensively for highly accelerated cine MRI by exploiting transform domain sparsity using linear transforms such as wavelets, and Fourier. However, in cardiac cine imaging, the cardiac volume changes significantly between frames, and there often exist abrupt pixel value changes along time. In order to effectively sparsify such temporal variations, it is necessary to exploit temporal redundancy along motion trajectories. This paper introduces a novel patch-based reconstruction method to exploit geometric similarities in the spatio-temporal domain. In particular, we use a low rank constraint for similar patches along motion, based on the observation that rank structures are relatively less sensitive to global intensity changes, but make it easier to capture moving edges. A Nash equilibrium formulation with relaxation is employed to guarantee convergence. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm clearly reconstructs important anatomical structures in cardiac cine image and provides improved image quality compared to existing state-of-the-art methods such as k-t FOCUSS, k-t SLR, and MASTeR.

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In magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, T2 and T2 star (T2*) relaxation times represent tissue properties, which can be quantified by specific imaging sequences. Especially, T2 prime (T2 ) that can be derived from T2 and T2* are clinically valuable for delineation of areas with increased oxygen extraction fraction in acute stroke. However, there are limitations in this method because it requires acquisition of many images for the generation of T2 and T2* relaxation time maps. In particular, time saving is the most important factor in acquisition of MRI in acute ischemic stroke because therapy should be given to patients as soon as possible. Therefore, to reduce the acquisition time of MR data, we use a compressed sensing algorithm using patch based low rank penalty for the reconstruction of T2 and T2* weighted images to obtain the T2 prime map. Our results showed that significant acceleration in T2 image acquisition is possible using the proposed method.

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In x-ray CT imaging, the existence of metal in the imaging field of view deteriorates the quality of the reconstructed image. This is because rays penetrating dense metal implants are highly corrupted, causing huge inconsistency between projection data. The result appears as strong artifacts such as black and white streaks on the reconstructed image disturbing correct diagnosis. For several decades, there have been various trials to reduce metal artifacts for better image quality. As the computing power of computer processors became more powerful, more complex algorithms with improved performance have been introduced. For instance, the initially developed metal artifact reduction (MAR) algorithms based on simple sinogram interpolation were combined with computationally expensive iterative reconstruction techniques to pursue better image quality. Recently, even machine learning based techniques have been introduced, which require huge amounts of computations for training. In this paper, we introduce an image based novel MAR algorithm in which severe metal artifacts such as black shadings are detected by the proposed method in a straightforward manner based on a linear interpolation. To do that, a new concept of metal artifact classification is devised using linear interpolation in the virtual projection domain. The proposed method reduces severe artifacts very quickly and effectively and has good performance to keep the detailed body structure preserved. Results of qualitative and quantitative comparisons with other representative algorithms such as LIMAR and NMAR support the excellence of the proposed algorithm. Thanks to the nature of reducing artifacts in the image itself and its low computational cost, the proposed algorithm can function as an initial image generator for other MAR algorithms, as well as being integrated in the modalities under limited computation power such as mobile CT scanners.