Free-Breathing Snapshot Reconstruction for 3D Super-Resolution
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current medical imaging technologies struggle with motion artifacts caused by respiratory motion during medical examinations, particularly in reconstructing high-resolution volumetric images of organs in a breathing body.
Innovation Solution
A free-breathing system and method that uses a snapshot module to generate multiple snapshots of a 3D portion of a breathing body, with iterative 3D shift estimation and super-resolution reconstruction to overcome noise and motion artifacts, allowing for better through-plane and in-plane resolution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the patient holds their breath during the medical examination, then motion artifacts caused by breathing are minimized, but patient comfort deteriorates and the examination cannot be completed for the entire duration
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts the snapshot acquisition timing based on the respiratory cycle. By synchronizing snapshots with the breathing rhythm and using iterative 3D shift estimation to correct motion, the system maintains image quality without requiring the patient to hold their breath, thus resolving the contradiction between image reliability and patient comfort.
2Reliability
If motion correction algorithms are used to minimize motion artifacts, then image quality improves, but through-plane resolution remains limited to 4mm-6mm compared to in-plane resolution of 1mm-1.5mm
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a new dimension to motion correction by estimating 3D shifts rather than correcting only 2D in-plane motion. The iterative 3D shift estimation module calculates displacement vectors in three dimensions, allowing the system to achieve superior through-plane resolution (comparable to in-plane resolution) while maintaining motion artifact reduction, thus resolving the resolution contradiction.
3Measurement precision
If multiple snapshots are acquired for each snapshot plane to improve resolution, then image quality improves, but the examination time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously acquires snapshots throughout the entire examination duration without interruption, maintaining continuous imaging coverage. By combining these continuous snapshots with iterative 3D shift estimation and super-resolution reconstruction, the system achieves high resolution without requiring repeated breath-hold examinations, thus resolving the time-resolution contradiction.
Data Source
AI summary
The present disclosure concerns a free-breathing system for reconstructing a super-resolution volume of a 3D portion of a breathing body, including: a medical imaging device generating at least two snapshots for each plane within a set of K parallel planes transverse to the 3D portion while the body is freely breathing; a contour extraction module for extracting at least part of a contour of 2D cross-sections from the snapshots; an iterative 3D shift estimation module for iteratively estimating a 3D shift in a 3D image space of the extracted contours; and a super-resolution reconstruction module for: repositioning in the image 3D space all snapshots according to the computed 3D shift, sampling the repositioned snapshots with a super-resolution factor, and computing voxel intensities in the sampled image 3D space by averaging voxel values from the snapshots, so as to reconstruct the super-resolution volume of the 3D portion.