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Quantitative assessment of susceptibility‐weighted imaging processing methods
Author(s) -
Li Ningzhi,
Wang WenTung,
Sati Pascal,
Pham Dzung L.,
Butman John A.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of magnetic resonance imaging
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.563
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1522-2586
pISSN - 1053-1807
DOI - 10.1002/jmri.24501
Subject(s) - computer science , filter (signal processing) , artificial intelligence , direct conversion receiver , smoothing , computer vision , phase (matter) , pixel , noise (video) , image quality , image processing , pattern recognition (psychology) , image (mathematics) , physics , telecommunications , quantum mechanics , detector
Purpose To evaluate different susceptibility‐weighted imaging (SWI) phase processing methods and parameter selection, thereby improving understanding of potential artifacts, as well as facilitating choice of methodology in clinical settings. Materials and Methods Two major phase processing methods, homodyne‐filtering and phase unwrapping‐high pass (HP) filtering, were investigated with various phase unwrapping approaches, filter sizes, and filter types. Magnitude and phase images were acquired from a healthy subject and brain injury patients on a 3T clinical Siemens MRI system. The results were evaluated based on image contrast‐to‐noise ratio and presence of processing artifacts. Results When using a relatively small filter size (32 pixels for the matrix size 512 × 512 pixels), all homodyne‐filtering methods were subject to phase errors leading to 2% to 3% masked brain area in lower and middle axial slices. All phase unwrapping‐filtering/smoothing approaches demonstrated fewer phase errors and artifacts compared to the homodyne‐filtering approaches. For performing phase unwrapping, Fourier‐based methods, although less accurate, were 2–4 orders of magnitude faster than the PRELUDE, Goldstein, and Quality‐guide methods. Conclusion Although homodyne‐filtering approaches are faster and more straightforward, phase unwrapping followed by HP filtering approaches perform more accurately in a wider variety of acquisition scenarios. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2014;40:1463–1473 . © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc .