Feasibility of high temporal resolution breast DCE-MRI using compressed sensing theory

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering
• Radiology

Background:

• Dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) is crucial for breast cancer diagnosis.
• Achieving high temporal resolution in breast DCE-MRI is challenging due to data acquisition time constraints.
• Compressed sensing (CS) theory offers potential solutions for accelerating MRI acquisition.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the feasibility of Reference Image based Compressed Sensing (RICS) for high temporal resolution breast DCE-MRI.
• To assess RICS's ability to reconstruct accurate uptake curves from undersampled data.
• To investigate RICS's impact on spatial resolution and motion artifacts.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted: 1) Reconstruction of uptake curves from clinical DCE-MRI data using RICS with average and motion estimation/compensation (ME/MC) approaches. 2) An in vitro phantom study to assess RICS for improving temporal resolution without spatial degradation.
• Undersampled datasets were extracted from fully sampled clinical data for uptake curve analysis.
• In vitro phantom experiments evaluated RICS's performance in a controlled environment.

Main Results:

• RICS demonstrated high fidelity in reconstructing uptake curves, with Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.977 (ME/MC) and 0.953 (average approach) compared to fully sampled data.
• The ME/MC approach proved superior to the average approach in mitigating motion-related artifacts.
• The in vitro study showed RICS achieved a 10-fold acceleration in temporal resolution without compromising spatial resolution.

Conclusions:

• RICS is a feasible technique for enhancing temporal resolution in breast DCE-MRI.
• RICS enables faithful reconstruction of pharmacokinetic parameters (uptake curves).
• The RICS method holds promise for improving diagnostic accuracy and patient comfort in breast MRI.