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GRAPPA (Generalized Autocalibrating Partially Parallel Acquisition) is a widely used parallel MRI reconstruction technique. The processing of data from multichannel receiver coils may increase the storage and computational requirements of GRAPPA reconstruction. Random projection on GRAPPA (RP-GRAPPA) uses random projection (RP) method to overcome the computational overheads of solving large linear equations in the calibration phase of GRAPPA, saving reconstruction time. However, RP-GRAPPA compromises the reconstruction accuracy in case of large reductions in the dimensions of calibration equations. In this paper, we present the implementation of GRAPPA reconstruction method using potential iterative solvers to estimate the reconstruction coefficients from the randomly projected calibration equations. Experimental results show that the proposed methods withstand the reconstruction accuracy (visually and quantitatively) against large reductions in the dimension of linear equations, when compared with RP-GRAPPA reconstruction. Particularly, the proposed method using conjugate gradient for least squares (CGLS) demonstrates more savings in the computational time of GRAPPA, without significant loss in the reconstruction accuracy, when compared with RP-GRAPPA. It is also demonstrated that the proposed method using CGLS complements the channel compression method for reducing the computational complexities associated with higher channel count, thereby resulting in additional memory savings and speedup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generalized autocalibrating partially parallel acquisition (GRAPPA) has been a widely used parallel MRI technique. However, noise deteriorates the reconstructed image when reduction factor increases or even at low reduction factor for some noisy datasets. Noise, initially generated from scanner, propagates noise-related errors during fitting and interpolation procedures of GRAPPA to distort the final reconstructed image quality. The basic idea we proposed to improve GRAPPA is to remove noise from a system identification perspective. In this paper, we first analyze the GRAPPA noise problem from a noisy input-output system perspective; then, a new framework based on errors-in-variables (EIV) model is developed for analyzing noise generation mechanism in GRAPPA and designing a concrete method—instrument variables (IV) GRAPPA to remove noise. The proposed EIV framework provides possibilities that noiseless GRAPPA reconstruction could be achieved by existing methods that solve EIV problem other than IV method. Experimental results show that the proposed reconstruction algorithm can better remove the noise compared to the conventional GRAPPA, as validated with both of phantom and in vivo brain data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The monoexponential model is widely used in quantitative biomedical imaging. Notable applications include apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) imaging and pharmacokinetics. The application of ADC imaging to the detection of malignant tissue has in turn prompted several studies concerning optimal experiment design for monoexponential model fitting. In this paper, we propose a new experiment design method that is based on minimizing the determinant of the covariance matrix of the estimated parameters (D-optimal design). In contrast to previous methods, D-optimal design is independent of the imaged quantities. Applying this method to ADC imaging, we demonstrate its steady performance for the whole range of input variables (imaged parameters, number of measurements, and range of b-values). Using Monte Carlo simulations we show that the D-optimal design outperforms existing experiment design methods in terms of accuracy and precision of the estimated parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]