Automated MRI Quality Assessment of Brain T1-weighted MRI in Clinical Data Warehouses: A Transfer Learning Approach Relying on Artefact Simulation
Sorbonne Université（索邦大学）；Institut du Cerveau – Paris Brain Institute - ICM（大脑研究所——巴黎脑研究所 - ICM）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Inria（法国国家信息与自动化研究所）；Inserm（法国国家健康与医学研究院）；AP-HP（巴黎公共医疗集团）；Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière（皮蒂-萨尔皮特里医院）
Sophie Loizillon, Simona Bottani, Stéphane Mabille, Yannick Jacob, Aurélien Maire, Sebastian Ströer, Didier Dormont, Olivier Colliot, Ninon Burgos
The emergence of clinical data warehouses (CDWs), which contain the medical data of millions of patients, has paved the way for vast data sharing for research. The quality of MRIs gathered in CDWs differs greatly from what is observed in research settings and reflects a certain clinical reality. Consequently, a significant proportion of these images turns out to be unusable due to their poor quality. Given the massive volume of MRIs contained in CDWs, the manual rating of image quality is impossible. Thus, it is necessary to develop an automated solution capable of effectively identifying corrupted images in CDWs. This study presents an innovative transfer learning method for automated quality control of 3D gradient echo T1-weighted brain MRIs within a CDW, leveraging artefact simulation. We first intentionally corrupt images from research datasets by inducing poorer contrast, adding noise and introducing motion artefacts. Subsequently, three artefact-specific models are pre-trained using these corrupted images to detect distinct types of artefacts. Finally, the models are generalised to routine clinical data through a transfer learning technique, utilising 3660 manually annotated images. The overall image quality is inferred from the results of the three models, each designed to detect a specific type of artefact. Our method was validated on an independent test set of 385 3D gradient echo T1-weighted MRIs. Our proposed approach achieved excellent results for the detection of bad quality MRIs, with a balanced accuracy of over 87%, surpassing our previous approach by 3.5 percent points. Additionally, we achieved a satisfactory balanced accuracy of 79% for the detection of moderate quality MRIs, outperforming our previous performance by 5 percent points. Our framework provides a valuable tool for exploiting the potential of MRIs in CDWs.
Motion artefacts created by patient motion during an MRI scan occur frequently in practice, often rendering the scans clinically unusable and requiring a re-scan. While many methods have been employed to ameliorate the effects of patient motion, these often fall short in practice. In this paper we propose a novel method for removing motion artefacts using a deep neural network with two input branches that discriminates between patient poses using the motion's timing. The first branch receives a subset of the $k$-space data collected during a single patient pose, and the second branch receives …
Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) plays an important role in the analysis of cardiac function. However, the acquisition is often accompanied by motion artefacts because of the difficulty of breath-hold, especially for acute symptoms patients. Therefore, it is essential to assess the quality of cardiac MRI for further analysis. Time-consuming manual-based classification is not conducive to the construction of an end-to-end computer aided diagnostic system. To overcome this problem, an automatic cardiac MRI quality estimation framework using ensemble and transfer learning is proposed in t…
Quality control (QC) of MR images is essential to ensure that downstream analyses such as segmentation can be performed successfully. Currently, QC is predominantly performed visually and subjectively, at significant time and operator cost. We aim to automate the process using a probabilistic network that estimates segmentation uncertainty through a heteroscedastic noise model, providing a measure of task-specific quality. By augmenting training images with k-space artefacts, we propose a novel CNN architecture to decouple sources of uncertainty related to the task and different k-space artefa…
Darmstadt University of Technology（达姆施塔特工业大学）；Istanbul Technical University（伊斯坦布尔理工大学）
While machine learning approaches perform well on their training domain, they generally tend to fail in a real-world application. In cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR), respiratory motion represents a major challenge in terms of acquisition quality and therefore subsequent analysis and final diagnosis. We present a workflow which predicts a severity score for respiratory motion in CMR for the CMRxMotion challenge 2022. This is an important tool for technicians to immediately provide feedback on the CMR quality during acquisition, as poor-quality images can directly be re-acquired …
Inria（法国国家信息与自动化研究所）；Sorbonne Université（索邦大学）；Institut du Cerveau - Paris Brain Institute - ICM（巴黎大脑研究所）；Inserm（法国国家健康与医学研究院）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；AP-HP, Hôpital de la Pitié Salpêtrière（巴黎公立医院集团，皮提耶-萨勒佩特里医院）；AP-HP, WIND department（巴黎公立医院集团，WIND部门）
Many studies on machine learning (ML) for computer-aided diagnosis have so far been mostly restricted to high-quality research data. Clinical data warehouses, gathering routine examinations from hospitals, offer great promises for training and validation of ML models in a realistic setting. However, the use of such clinical data warehouses requires quality control (QC) tools. Visual QC by experts is time-consuming and does not scale to large datasets. In this paper, we propose a convolutional neural network (CNN) for the automatic QC of 3D T1-weighted brain MRI for a large heterogeneous clinic…
University College London（伦敦大学学院）；King’s College London（伦敦国王学院）
Quality control (QC) of medical images is essential to ensure that downstream analyses such as segmentation can be performed successfully. Currently, QC is predominantly performed visually at significant time and operator cost. We aim to automate the process by formulating a probabilistic network that estimates uncertainty through a heteroscedastic noise model, hence providing a proxy measure of task-specific image quality that is learnt directly from the data. By augmenting the training data with different types of simulated k-space artefacts, we propose a novel cascading CNN architecture bas…
Simultaneous Image Quality Improvement and Artefacts Correction in Accelerated MRI
Translational Radiomics, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Luxembourg（转化放射组学，卢森堡健康研究所，卢森堡）；In-Vivo Imaging Platform, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Luxembourg（活体成像平台，卢森堡健康研究所，卢森堡）；Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic（电气工程与通信学院，布拉格技术大学，捷克共和国）；Institute of Scientific Instruments of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic（捷克科学院科学仪器研究所，捷克共和国）
University of Bath（巴斯大学）；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）；GE Healthcare（通用电气医疗集团）；Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt（英戈尔施塔特应用技术大学）
Current spatiotemporal deep learning approaches to Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF) build artefact-removal models customised to a particular k-space subsampling pattern which is used for fast (compressed) acquisition. This may not be useful when the acquisition process is unknown during training of the deep learning model and/or changes during testing time. This paper proposes an iterative deep learning plug-and-play reconstruction approach to MRF which is adaptive to the forward acquisition process. Spatiotemporal image priors are learned by an image denoiser i.e. a Convolutional Neura…
RSFR: A Coarse-to-Fine Reconstruction Framework for Diffusion Tensor Cardiac MRI with Semantic-Aware Refinement
Imperial College London（帝国理工学院伦敦分校）；National Heart and Lung Institute（国家心肺研究所）；Cardiovascular Research Centre（心血管研究中心）；Royal Brompton Hospital（皇家布里蒙特医院）；School of Biomedical Engineering, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学深圳校区生物医学工程学院）；Robotics and Autonomous Systems Thrust & Data Science and Analytics Thrust, HKUST (GZ)（香港科技大学（广州）机器人与自主系统 thrust 及数据科学与分析 thrust）；Yau Mathematical Sciences Centre, Tsinghua University（清华大学姚数学科学中心）；Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学应用数学与理论物理系）；School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King’s College London（伦敦国王学院生物医学工程与影像科学学院）
University College London（伦敦大学学院）；Massachusetts General Hospital（麻省总医院）；Harvard Medical School（哈佛医学院）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）
Every year, millions of brain MRI scans are acquired in hospitals, which is a figure considerably larger than the size of any research dataset. Therefore, the ability to analyse such scans could transform neuroimaging research. Yet, their potential remains untapped, since no automated algorithm is robust enough to cope with the high variability in clinical acquisitions (MR contrasts, resolutions, orientations, artefacts, subject populations). Here we present SynthSeg+, an AI segmentation suite that enables, for the first time, robust analysis of heterogeneous clinical datasets. In addition to …
University College London（伦敦大学学院）；King’s College London（伦敦国王学院）
Quality control (QC) in medical image analysis is time-consuming and laborious, leading to increased interest in automated methods. However, what is deemed suitable quality for algorithmic processing may be different from human-perceived measures of visual quality. In this work, we pose MR image quality assessment from an image reconstruction perspective. We train Bayesian CNNs using a heteroscedastic uncertainty model to recover clean images from noisy data, providing measures of uncertainty over the predictions. This framework enables us to divide data corruption into learnable and non-learn…
University College London（伦敦大学学院）；King's College London（伦敦国王学院）；Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust（皇家国立骨科医院NHS信托基金）
Metal artefact reduction (MAR) techniques aim at removing metal-induced noise from clinical images. In Computed Tomography (CT), supervised deep learning approaches have been shown effective but limited in generalisability, as they mostly rely on synthetic data. In Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) instead, no method has yet been introduced to correct the susceptibility artefact, still present even in MAR-specific acquisitions. In this work, we hypothesise that a multimodal approach to MAR would improve both CT and MRI. Given their different artefact appearance, their complementary information …
University of Bath（巴斯大学）；Imago7 foundation（Imago7基金会）；University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学）；GE Healthcare（GE医疗）；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）
We propose a dictionary-matching-free pipeline for multi-parametric quantitative MRI image computing. Our approach has two stages based on compressed sensing reconstruction and deep learned quantitative inference. The reconstruction phase is convex and incorporates efficient spatiotemporal regularisations within an accelerated iterative shrinkage algorithm. This minimises the under-sampling (aliasing) artefacts from aggressively short scan times. The learned quantitative inference phase is purely trained on physical simulations (Bloch equations) that are flexible for producing rich training sa…
Medical Faculty Mannheim of Heidelberg University（海德堡大学曼海姆医学院）
Statistical analysis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can help radiologists to detect pathologies that are otherwise likely to be missed. Deep learning (DL) has shown promise in modeling complex spatial data for brain anomaly detection. However, DL models have major deficiencies: they need large amounts of high-quality training data, are difficult to design and train and are sensitive to subtle changes in scanning protocols and hardware. Here, we show that also simple statistical methods such as voxel-wise (baseline and covariance) models and a linear projection method using spatial pattern…
Fighting the scanner effect in brain MRI segmentation with a progressive level-of-detail network trained on multi-site data
Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging（认知神经成像中心）；School of Psychology & Neuroscience（心理与神经科学学院）；University of Glasgow（格拉斯哥大学）；University of Brescia（布雷西亚大学）；Department of Information Engineering（信息工程系）
University College London（伦敦大学学院）；Inria（法国国家信息与自动化研究所）；Massachusetts General Hospital（麻省总医院）；Harvard Medical School（哈佛医学院）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）
Joint registration of a stack of 2D histological sections to recover 3D structure (``3D histology reconstruction'') finds application in areas such as atlas building and validation of \emph{in vivo} imaging. Straightforward pairwise registration of neighbouring sections yields smooth reconstructions but has well-known problems such as ``banana effect'' (straightening of curved structures) and ``z-shift'' (drift). While these problems can be alleviated with an external, linearly aligned reference (e.g., Magnetic Resonance (MR) images), registration is often inaccurate due to contrast difference…
Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg（马格德堡奥托·冯·格里克大学）；Human Technopole（人类技术园）；German Centre for Neurodegenerative Disease（德国神经退行性疾病中心）；Centre for Behavioural Brain Sciences（行为脑科学中心）
Computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging are two widely used clinical imaging modalities for non-invasive diagnosis. However, both of these modalities come with certain problems. CT uses harmful ionising radiation, and MRI suffers from slow acquisition speed. Both problems can be tackled by undersampling, such as sparse sampling. However, such undersampled data leads to lower resolution and introduces artefacts. Several techniques, including deep learning based methods, have been proposed to reconstruct such data. However, the undersampled reconstruction problem for these two modalit…
Limited amount of labelled training data are a common problem in medical imaging. This makes it difficult to train a well-generalised model and therefore often leads to failure in unknown domains. Hippocampus segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans is critical for the diagnosis and treatment of neuropsychatric disorders. Domain differences in contrast or shape can significantly affect segmentation. We address this issue by disentangling a T1-weighted MRI image into its content and domain. This separation enables us to perform a domain transfer and thus convert data from new so…
Imperial College London（帝国理工学院）；Royal Brompton Hospital（皇家布朗普顿医院）；Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU（巴斯克大学（UPV/EHU））；TECNALIA（泰克纳利亚研究中心）；Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital（深圳市第二人民医院）；The First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University Health Science Center（深圳大学医学部第一附属医院）
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an important non-invasive clinical tool that can produce high-resolution and reproducible images. However, a long scanning time is required for high-quality MR images, which leads to exhaustion and discomfort of patients, inducing more artefacts due to voluntary movements of the patients and involuntary physiological movements. To accelerate the scanning process, methods by k-space undersampling and deep learning based reconstruction have been popularised. This work introduced SwinMR, a novel Swin transformer based method for fast MRI reconstruction. The who…
University of Sussex（萨塞克斯大学）；Brighton and Sussex Medical School（布莱顿和萨塞克斯医学院）；St. Vincent’s University Hospital（圣文森特大学医院）；University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学）；Cardiff University（卡迪夫大学）
Streamlined qBOLD acquisitions enable experimentally straightforward observations of brain oxygen metabolism. $R_2^\prime$ maps are easily inferred; however, the Oxygen extraction fraction (OEF) and deoxygenated blood volume (DBV) are more ambiguously determined from the data. As such, existing inference methods tend to yield very noisy and underestimated OEF maps, while overestimating DBV. This work describes a novel probabilistic machine learning approach that can infer plausible distributions of OEF and DBV. Initially, we create a model that produces informative voxelwise prior distribution…
Predicting dynamic, motion-related changes in B0 field in the brain at a 7 T MRI using a subject-specific fine-tuned U-net
Medical University of Vienna（维也纳医科大学）；University of Freiburg（弗莱堡大学）；University of Freiburg – Medical Centre（弗莱堡大学医学中心）；Karl Landsteiner Institute for Clinical Molecular MR in Musculoskeletal Imaging（卡尔·兰德施泰纳肌肉骨骼成像临床分子磁共振研究所）；Carinthia University of Applied Sciences（克恩顿应用科学大学）
Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin（柏林夏里特医学院）；Berlin Institute of Health（柏林健康研究所）；Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)（德国联邦物理技术研究院（PTB））；King’s College London（伦敦国王学院）
In this work we reduce undersampling artefacts in two-dimensional ($2D$) golden-angle radial cine cardiac MRI by applying a modified version of the U-net. We train the network on $2D$ spatio-temporal slices which are previously extracted from the image sequences. We compare our approach to two $2D$ and a $3D$ Deep Learning-based post processing methods and to three iterative reconstruction methods for dynamic cardiac MRI. Our method outperforms the $2D$ spatially trained U-net and the $2D$ spatio-temporal U-net. Compared to the $3D$ spatio-temporal U-net, our method delivers comparable results…
Despite the great success of convolutional neural networks (CNN) in 3D medical image segmentation tasks, the methods currently in use are still not robust enough to the different protocols utilized by different scanners, and to the variety of image properties or artefacts they produce. To this end, we introduce OOCS-enhanced networks, a novel architecture inspired by the innate nature of visual processing in the vertebrates. With different 3D U-Net variants as the base, we add two 3D residual components to the second encoder blocks: on and off center-surround (OOCS). They generalise the gangli…
National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London（帝国理工学院国家心肺研究所）；Imperial College London（帝国理工学院）；Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；Brunel University London（伦敦布鲁内尔大学）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）；Weizmann Institute of Science（魏茨曼科学研究所）
Research studies have shown no qualms about using data driven deep learning models for downstream tasks in medical image analysis, e.g., anatomy segmentation and lesion detection, disease diagnosis and prognosis, and treatment planning. However, deep learning models are not the sovereign remedy for medical image analysis when the upstream imaging is not being conducted properly (with artefacts). This has been manifested in MRI studies, where the scanning is typically slow, prone to motion artefacts, with a relatively low signal to noise ratio, and poor spatial and/or temporal resolution. Recen…
MedDigit；German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases（德国神经退行性疾病中心）；Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences（行为脑科学中心）
In MRI, motion artefacts are among the most common types of artefacts. They can degrade images and render them unusable for accurate diagnosis. Traditional methods, such as prospective or retrospective motion correction, have been proposed to avoid or alleviate motion artefacts. Recently, several other methods based on deep learning approaches have been proposed to solve this problem. This work proposes to enhance the performance of existing deep learning models by the inclusion of additional information present as image priors. The proposed approach has shown promising results and will be fur…
Access to the proper infrastructure is critical when performing medical image segmentation with Deep Learning. This requirement makes it difficult to run state-of-the-art segmentation models in resource-constrained scenarios like primary care facilities in rural areas and during crises. The recently emerging field of Neural Cellular Automata (NCA) has shown that locally interacting one-cell models can achieve competitive results in tasks such as image generation or segmentations in low-resolution inputs. However, they are constrained by high VRAM requirements and the difficulty of reaching con…
Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg（马格德堡奥托·冯·格里克大学）；University Hospital Magdeburg（马格德堡大学医院）；German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases（德国神经退行性疾病中心）；Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences（行为脑科学中心）；Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology（莱布尼茨神经生物学研究所）；MedDigit
Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) can be used to characterise the microstructure of the nervous tissue, e.g. to delineate brain white matter connections in a non-invasive manner via fibre tracking. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in high spatial resolution would play an important role in visualising such fibre tracts in a superior manner. However, obtaining an image of such resolution comes at the expense of longer scan time. Longer scan time can be associated with the increase of motion artefacts, due to the patient's psychological and physical conditions. Single Image S…
Imperial College London（伦敦帝国理工学院）；Royal Brompton Hospital（皇家布朗普顿医院）；Yantai University（烟台大学）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）；Beijing Institute of Technology（北京理工大学）
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a vital component of medical imaging. When compared to other image modalities, it has advantages such as the absence of radiation, superior soft tissue contrast, and complementary multiple sequence information. However, one drawback of MRI is its comparatively slow scanning and reconstruction compared to other image modalities, limiting its usage in some clinical applications when imaging time is critical. Traditional compressive sensing based MRI (CS-MRI) reconstruction can speed up MRI acquisition, but suffers from a long iterative process and noise-induce…
Cine cardiac MRI reconstruction using a convolutional recurrent network with refinement
Institute for Digital Communications, University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学数字通信研究所）；Institute of Information Science and Technologies “Alessandro Faedo”, National Research Council of Italy (CNR)（意大利国家研究委员会信息科学与技术研究所（亚历山德罗·法埃多））；Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa（比萨大学信息工程系）；Institute for Infrastructure and Environment, University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学基础设施与环境研究所）；The Alan Turing Institute（阿兰·图灵研究所）
Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin（柏林夏里特医学院）；University of Innsbruck（因斯布鲁克大学）；Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)（德国联邦物理技术研究院）；Technical University of Berlin（柏林工业大学）；German Cancer Research Center（德国癌症研究中心）
In this paper we present a generalized Deep Learning-based approach for solving ill-posed large-scale inverse problems occuring in medical image reconstruction. Recently, Deep Learning methods using iterative neural networks and cascaded neural networks have been reported to achieve state-of-the-art results with respect to various quantitative quality measures as PSNR, NRMSE and SSIM across different imaging modalities. However, the fact that these approaches employ the forward and adjoint operators repeatedly in the network architecture requires the network to process the whole images or volu…
University College London（伦敦大学学院）；VU University Medical Center（阿姆斯特丹自由大学医学中心）
Accurate and realistic simulation of high-dimensional medical images has become an important research area relevant to many AI-enabled healthcare applications. However, current state-of-the-art approaches lack the ability to produce satisfactory high-resolution and accurate subject-specific images. In this work, we present a deep learning framework, namely 4D-Degenerative Adversarial NeuroImage Net (4D-DANI-Net), to generate high-resolution, longitudinal MRI scans that mimic subject-specific neurodegeneration in ageing and dementia. 4D-DANI-Net is a modular framework based on adversarial train…
VariViT: A Vision Transformer for Variable Image Sizes
Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑技术大学）；Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Informatics in Medicine, Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑技术大学人工智能与医学信息研究所）；University of Zurich（苏黎世大学）；Harvard Medical School（哈佛医学院）
Background: Magnetic field inhomogeneities generate important geometric distortions in reconstructed echo-planar images. Various procedures were proposed for correcting these distortions on brain images; yet, few neuroimaging studies tailored and incorporated the use of these techniques in spinal cord diffusion MRI. Purpose: We present a comparative evaluation of distortion correction methods that use the reversed gradient polarity technique on spinal cord. We propose novel geometric metrics to measure the alignment of the reconstructed diffusion model with the apparent centerline of the spina…
Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg（马格德堡奥托·冯·格里克大学）
MRI is an inherently slow process, which leads to long scan time for high-resolution imaging. The speed of acquisition can be increased by ignoring parts of the data (undersampling). Consequently, this leads to the degradation of image quality, such as loss of resolution or introduction of image artefacts. This work aims to reconstruct highly undersampled Cartesian or radial MR acquisitions, with better resolution and with less to no artefact compared to conventional techniques like compressed sensing. In recent times, deep learning has emerged as a very important area of research and has show…
USLR: an open-source tool for unbiased and smooth longitudinal registration of brain MR
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya（加泰罗尼亚理工大学）；University of Barcelona（巴塞罗那大学）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina (CIBER-BBN)（生物工程、生物材料与纳米医学生物医学研究中心（CIBER-BBN））；Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School（马萨诸塞总医院和哈佛医学院）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute（伦斯勒理工学院）；Southeast University（东南大学）；Fudan University（复旦大学）；University of Massachusetts Lowell（马萨诸塞大学洛厄尔分校）；The University of Hong Kong（香港大学）
Tomographic image reconstruction with deep learning is an emerging field, but a recent landmark study reveals that several deep reconstruction networks are unstable for computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Specifically, three kinds of instabilities were reported: (1) strong image artefacts from tiny perturbations, (2) small features missing in a deeply reconstructed image, and (3) decreased imaging performance with increased input data. On the other hand, compressed sensing (CS) inspired reconstruction methods do not suffer from these instabilities because of their bu…
