NeXtQSM-A complete deep learning pipeline for data-consistent Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping trained with hybrid data.

Journal: Medical image analysis
Published Date:

Abstract

Deep learning based Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) has shown great potential in recent years, obtaining similar results to established non-learning approaches. Many current deep learning approaches are not data consistent, require in vivo training data or solve the QSM problem in consecutive steps resulting in the propagation of errors. Here we aim to overcome these limitations and developed a framework to solve the QSM processing steps jointly. We developed a new hybrid training data generation method that enables the end-to-end training for solving background field correction and dipole inversion in a data-consistent fashion using a variational network that combines the QSM model term and a learned regularizer. We demonstrate that NeXtQSM overcomes the limitations of previous deep learning methods. NeXtQSM offers a new deep learning based pipeline for computing quantitative susceptibility maps that integrates each processing step into the training and provides results that are robust and fast.

Authors

  • Francesco Cognolato
    Centre for Advanced Imaging, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; ARC Training Centre for Innovation in Biomedical Imaging Technology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
  • Kieran O'Brien
    Center for Advanced Imaging, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia.
  • Jin Jin
    Siemens Healthcare Pty Ltd, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
  • Simon Robinson
    Centre for Advanced Imaging, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; High Field MR Center, Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-Guided Therapy, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; Department of Neurology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria; Karl Landsteiner Institute for Clinical Molecular MR in Musculoskeletal Imaging, Vienna, Austria.
  • Frederik B Laun
    Institute of Radiology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen, Germany.
  • Markus Barth
    Center for Advanced Imaging, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia.
  • Steffen Bollmann
    Centre for Advanced Imaging, The University of Queensland, Building 57 of University Dr, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Brisbane, Australia. Electronic address: steffen.bollmann@cai.uq.edu.au.