Platform-independent image reconstruction for spiral magnetic resonance imaging

The distinct feature of data acquisition for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is that the data are sampled in frequency domain instead of spatial domain. Therefore, the acquired data must be inverse Fourier transformed to generate images. To apply fast Fourier transform (FFT), the data are usually acquired on rectilinear grids. However, acquiring data on rectilinear grids is not very efficient in MRI. A spiral trajectory, which starts at the origin of the frequency domain and spins out to higher spatial frequency is more efficient and faster than the conventional method. Since the spiral trajectories do not sample on rectilinear grids, raw data must be re-interpolated onto rectilinear grids prior to inverse FFT. This re-gridding process is done using a reconstruction program. When the platforms to run the program grow, the efforts required to maintain the program become prohibitive. This problem can be solved through the platform-independent Java programming language. In this paper, we report on our attempt to implement the spiral MRI reconstruction program in Java. We show that the performance is not significantly affected and that it is practical to use a platform-independent reconstruction software.