The Need

A major limitation of MRI is slow data acquisition, which can compromise patient comfort, drive up costs, and increase susceptibility to motion. The clinical adoption of volumetric imaging for musculoskeletal and neuro applications, the growing

demand for free-breathing real-time imaging for cardiovascular applications, and the emergence of high dimensional imaging (e.g., 4D/5D whole-heart imaging) demand motion robustness and accelerations that often cannot be realized with the existing technology.

The Technology

This technology portfolio uses new data acquisition and signal processing techniques to improve MRI offerings. These technologies relate to (i) improving image quality for dynamic or volumetric applications, (ii) improving motion-robustness and suppressing motion-related artifacts, and (iii) accelerating the acquisition process.

Commercial Applications

These technologies apply to the many clinical offerings where long acquisition times make data acquisition susceptible to motion. Such applications include (i) volumetric cine imaging, (ii) 4D/5D flow imaging, (iii) real-time cardiac imaging, (iv) volumetric abdominal imaging, (v) volumetric brain imaging, and (vi) volumetric musculoskeletal imaging. These technologies can be paired with either optimization-based iterative solvers or deep learning-based image reconstruction methods.

Benefits/Advantages

These technologies can help maintain a competitive product portfolio by offering shorter scan times, improved image quality, and fewer instances of “failed” scans.

Patents

• T2022-060: Venc Design and Velocity Estimation for Phase-Contrast MRI
• T2015-140: Single Breath-Hold 4D Flow Imaging Using Phase Contrast MRI
• T2023-285: Motion artifact reduction in CMR reconstruction using Compressive recovery with Outlier Rejection (CORe)
• T2018-309: Golden-shift Ordered Cartesian sampling (GOC) for Dynamic MRI

T2020-342: A novel computational procedure for accelerated, calibrationless magnetic resonance image reconstruction