Reconstruction by calibration over tensors for multi-coil multi-acquisition balanced SSFP imaging

To develop a rapid imaging framework for balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP) that jointly reconstructs undersampled data (by a factor of R) across multiple coils (D) and multiple acquisitions (N). To devise a multi-acquisition coil compression technique for improved computational efficiency.

The bSSFP image for a given coil and acquisition is modeled to be modulated by a coil sensitivity and a bSSFP profile. The proposed reconstruction by calibration over tensors (ReCat) recovers missing data by tensor interpolation over the coil and acquisition dimensions. Coil compression is achieved using a new method based on multilinear singular value decomposition (MLCC). ReCat is compared with iterative self-consistent parallel imaging (SPIRiT) and profile encoding (PE-SSFP) reconstructions.

Compared to parallel imaging or profile-encoding methods, ReCat attains sensitive depiction of high-spatial-frequency information even at higher R. In the brain, ReCat improves peak SNR (PSNR) by 1.1 ± 1.0 dB over SPIRiT and by 0.9 ± 0.3 dB over PE-SSFP (mean ± SD across subjects; average for N = 2-8, R = 8-16). Furthermore, reconstructions based on MLCC achieve 0.8 ± 0.6 dB higher PSNR compared to those based on geometric coil compression (GCC) (average for N = 2-8, R = 4-16).

ReCat is a promising acceleration framework for banding-artifact-free bSSFP imaging with high image quality; and MLCC offers improved computational efficiency for tensor-based reconstructions. Magn Reson Med 79:2542-2554, 2018. © 2017 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.