An MRI image processing and analysis system may identify instances of structure in MRI flow data, e.g., coherency, derive contours and/or clinical markers based on the identified structures. The system may be remotely located from one or more MRI acquisition systems, and perform: perform error detection and/or correction on MRI data sets (e.g., phase error correction, phase aliasing, signal unwrapping, and/or on other artifacts); segmentation; visualization of flow (e.g., velocity, arterial versus venous flow, shunts) superimposed on anatomical structure, quantification; verification; and/or generation of patient specific 4-D flow protocols. An asynchronous command and imaging pipeline allows remote image processing and analysis in a timely and secure manner even with complicated or large 4-D flow MRI data sets.

Techniques are disclosed for positioning a patient within a patient receiving area for a magnetic resonance examination. The techniques may include positioning the patient on a mobile patient table of a patient support facility and moving the patient table in a first horizontal direction until a region of the patient to be examined is arranged in a field of view of a patient receiving area of a magnetic resonance system. Moreover, the patient positioning techniques may include moving the patient table in a second horizontal direction and/or in a vertical direction within the patient receiving area, and acquiring medical magnetic resonance data of the region of the patient to be examined.

Processing techniques of volumetric anatomic and vector field data from volumetric phase-contrast MRI on a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system are provided to evaluate the physiology of the heart and vessels. This method includes the steps of: (1) correcting for phase-error in the source data, (2) visualizing the vector field superimposed on the anatomic data, (3) using this visualization to select and view planes in the volume, and (4) using these planes to delineate the boundaries of the heart and vessels so that measurements of the heart and vessels can be accurately obtained.

A method and system provides an acquisition scheme for generating MRE displacement data with whole-sample coverage, high spatial resolution, and adequate SNR in a short scan time. The method and system can acquire in-plane k-space shots over a volume of a sample divided into a plurality of slabs that each include a plurality of slices to obtain three dimensional multislab, multishot data, can apply refocusing pulses to the sample, can acquire navigators after the refocusing pulses, and can correct for phase errors based on an averaging of the navigators.

In a method and magnetic resonance (MR) apparatus for data acquisition with fat-water separation in a resulting MR image, an MR data acquisition sequence is operated to acquire MR signals from a subject. Said MR signals comprise fat signals originating from fat in the subject and water signals originating from water in the subject, are acquired by executing a frequency-modulated balanced steady-state free-precession (bSSFP) sequence. The MR signals are entered as numerical values into a memory organized as k-space, the memory thereby containing k-space data. An image is reconstructed from the k-data and subjected to regional phase correction. The corrected image being composed of respective pixels having an intensity produced by the fat signals and an intensity produced by the water signals, with the respective pixels being readily distinguishable from each other in the image due to use of the frequency-modulated bSSFP sequence and the block regional correction.

To perform Dixon MRI, generate multi-contrast images, and extract multi-parametric maps, this invention presents a multi-echo gradient echo protocol with two sets of echo trains. An example implementation of the invention at 3 T acquires a short-TE train (TE1.2 ms, TE<10 ms), which is used to map B0 inhomogeneity and proton density fat fraction (FF), and a secondsusceptibility sensitivelong-TE train (16 ms<TE<45 ms) will enable quantification of local frequency shift (LFS) and susceptibility. The presented pipeline automatically generates co-registered images and maps with/without fat-suppressed, including magnitude- and complex-based FF map, B0 map, anatomical images, brain mask, R2* map, unwrapped phase maps for each echo, susceptibility-sensitive images (SWI, LFS and quantitative susceptibility) for each echo, mean susceptibility-sensitive images for each echo-train. The invention is directly applicable to whole head/neck, liver, knee or even whole body scans with sliding table.

A method for magnetic resonance imaging reconstructs images that have reduced under-sampling artifacts from highly accelerated multi-spectral imaging acquisitions. The method includes performing by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus an accelerated multi-spectral imaging (MSI) acquisition within a field of view of the MRI apparatus, where the sampling trajectories of different spectral bins in the acquisition are different; and reconstructing bin images using neural network priors learned from training data as regularization to reduce under-sampling artifacts.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems and methods to determine and/or correct slice leakage and/or residual aliasing in the image domain in accelerated MRI imaging. Some implementations process one slice of MRI image domain data by input to a sensitivity encoding (SENSE) un-aliasing matrix built from predetermined RF signal reception sensitivity maps, thereby producing SENSE-decoded MRI image domain data for one pass-through image slice and at least one extra slice, and determine inter-slice leakage and/or in-plane residual aliasing based on content of the at least one extra output slice from the SENSE-decoded MRI image domain data. Some implementations correct slice leakage in reconstructed images by generating a fractional leakage matrix of inter-slice leakage measurements, and by multiplying the inverted fractional leakage matrix with uncorrected reconstructed images.

A computer-implemented method is provided for improving image quality with shortened acquisition time. The method comprises: determining an accelerated image acquisition scheme for imaging a subject using a medical imaging apparatus; acquiring a medical image of the subject according to the accelerated image acquisition scheme using the medical imaging apparatus; applying a deep network model to the medical image to improve the quality of the medical image; and outputting an improved quality image of the subject, for analysis by a physician.

Generation of artifacts caused by the FID signal is suppressed even when the parallel imaging is applied to the imaging using a spin echo type pulse sequence. In performing a pulse sequence of a spin echo type using an excitation RF pulse for exciting nuclear spin and an inversion RF pulse for inverting excited nuclear spin as a high-frequency magnetic field pulse, a high-frequency transmitter of a MRI apparatus changes the phase of the inversion RF pulse according to the phase encoding and the phase encoding number imparted for each echo signal. Specifically, the phase of the inversion RF pulse is controlled to be a quadratic function of the phase encode of the echo signal.