Dictionary learning compressed sensing reconstruction: pilot validation of accelerated echo planar J-resolved...

This study aimed at developing dictionary learning (DL) based compressed sensing (CS) reconstruction for randomly undersampled five-dimensional (5D) MR Spectroscopic Imaging (3D spatial + 2D spectral) data acquired in prostate cancer patients and healthy controls, and test its feasibility at 8x and 12x undersampling factors.

Prospectively undersampled 5D echo-planar J-resolved spectroscopic imaging (EP-JRESI) data were acquired in nine prostate cancer (PCa) patients and three healthy males. The 5D EP-JRESI data were reconstructed using DL and compared with gradient sparsity-based Total Variation (TV) and Perona-Malik (PM) methods. A hybrid reconstruction technique, Dictionary Learning-Total Variation (DLTV), was also designed to further improve the quality of reconstructed spectra.

The CS reconstruction of prospectively undersampled (8x and 12x) 5D EP-JRESI data acquired in prostate cancer and healthy subjects were performed using DL, DLTV, TV and PM. It is evident that the hybrid DLTV method can unambiguously resolve 2D J-resolved peaks including myo-inositol, citrate, creatine, spermine and choline.

Improved reconstruction of the accelerated 5D EP-JRESI data was observed using the hybrid DLTV. Accelerated acquisition of in vivo 5D data with as low as 8.33% samples (12x) corresponds to a total scan time of 14 min as opposed to a fully sampled scan that needs a total duration of 2.4 h (TR = 1.2 s, 32 [Formula: see text]×16 [Formula: see text]×8 [Formula: see text], 512 [Formula: see text] and 64 [Formula: see text]).