TY - JOUR
T1 - Improving the lesion appearance on FLAIR images synthetized from quantitative MRI
T2 - a fast, hybrid approach
AU - Xu, Fei
AU - Mandija, Stefano
AU - Kleinloog, Jordi P.D.
AU - Liu, Hongyan
AU - van der Heide, Oscar
AU - van der Kolk, Anja G.
AU - Dankbaar, Jan Willem
AU - van den Berg, Cornelis A.T.
AU - Sbrizzi, Alessandro
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2024/12
Y1 - 2024/12
N2 - Objective: The image quality of synthetized FLAIR (fluid attenuated inversion recovery) images is generally inferior to its conventional counterpart, especially regarding the lesion contrast mismatch. This work aimed to improve the lesion appearance through a hybrid methodology. Materials and methods: We combined a full brain 5-min MR-STAT acquisition followed by FLAIR synthetization step with an ultra-under sampled conventional FLAIR sequence and performed the retrospective and prospective analysis of the proposed method on the patient datasets and a healthy volunteer. Results: All performance metrics of the proposed hybrid FLAIR images on patient datasets were significantly higher than those of the physics-based FLAIR images (p < 0.005), and comparable to those of conventional FLAIR images. The small difference between prospective and retrospective analysis on a healthy volunteer demonstrated the validity of the retrospective analysis of the hybrid method as presented for the patient datasets. Discussion: The proposed hybrid FLAIR achieved an improved lesion appearance in the clinical cases with neurological diseases compared to the physics-based FLAIR images, Future prospective work on patient data will address the validation of the method from a diagnostic perspective by radiological inspection of the new images over a larger patient cohort.
AB - Objective: The image quality of synthetized FLAIR (fluid attenuated inversion recovery) images is generally inferior to its conventional counterpart, especially regarding the lesion contrast mismatch. This work aimed to improve the lesion appearance through a hybrid methodology. Materials and methods: We combined a full brain 5-min MR-STAT acquisition followed by FLAIR synthetization step with an ultra-under sampled conventional FLAIR sequence and performed the retrospective and prospective analysis of the proposed method on the patient datasets and a healthy volunteer. Results: All performance metrics of the proposed hybrid FLAIR images on patient datasets were significantly higher than those of the physics-based FLAIR images (p < 0.005), and comparable to those of conventional FLAIR images. The small difference between prospective and retrospective analysis on a healthy volunteer demonstrated the validity of the retrospective analysis of the hybrid method as presented for the patient datasets. Discussion: The proposed hybrid FLAIR achieved an improved lesion appearance in the clinical cases with neurological diseases compared to the physics-based FLAIR images, Future prospective work on patient data will address the validation of the method from a diagnostic perspective by radiological inspection of the new images over a larger patient cohort.
KW - Brain MRI
KW - FLAIR
KW - Quantitative MRI
KW - Synthetic MRI
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85201930448&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10334-024-01198-z
DO - 10.1007/s10334-024-01198-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 39180686
AN - SCOPUS:85201930448
SN - 0968-5243
VL - 37
SP - 1021
EP - 1030
JO - Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine
JF - Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine
IS - 6
ER -