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Abdominal motion tracking with free-breathing XD-GRASP acquisitions using spatio-temporal geodesic trajectories

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A Correction to this article was published on 17 February 2022

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Abstract

Free-breathing external beam radiotherapy remains challenging due to the complex elastic or irregular motion of abdominal organs, as imaging moving organs leads to the creation of motion blurring artifacts. In this paper, we propose a radial-based MRI reconstruction method from 3D free-breathing abdominal data using spatio-temporal geodesic trajectories, to quantify motion during radiotherapy. The prospective study was approved by the institutional review board and consent was obtained from all participants. A total of 25 healthy volunteers, 12 women and 13 men (38 years ± 12 [standard deviation]), and 11 liver cancer patients underwent imaging using a 3.0 T clinical MRI system. The radial acquisition based on golden-angle sparse sampling was performed using a 3D stack-of-stars gradient-echo sequence and reconstructed using a discretized piecewise spatio-temporal trajectory defined in a low-dimensional embedding, which tracks the inhale and exhale phases, allowing the separation between distinct motion phases. Liver displacement between phases as measured with the proposed radial approach based on the deformation vector fields was compared to a navigator-based approach. Images reconstructed with the proposed technique with 20 motion states and registered with the multiscale B-spline approach received on average the highest Likert scores for the overall image quality and visual SNR score 3.2 ± 0.3 (mean ± standard deviation), with liver displacement errors varying between 0.1 and 2.0 mm (mean 0.8 ± 0.6 mm). When compared to navigator-based approaches, the proposed method yields similar deformation vector field magnitudes and angle distributions, and with improved reconstruction accuracy based on mean squared errors.

Graphic Abstract

Schematic illustration of the proposed 4D-MRI reconstruction method based on radial golden-angle acquisitions and a respiration motion model from a manifold embedding used for motion tracking. First, data is extracted from the center of k-space using golden-angle sampling, which is then mapped onto a low-dimensional embedding, describing the relationship between neighboring samples in the breathing cycle. The trained model is then used to extract the respiratory motion signal for slice re-ordering. The process then improves the image quality through deformable image registration. Using a reference volume, the deformation vector field (DVF) of sequential motion states are extracted, followed by deformable registrations. The output is a 4DMRI which allows to visualize and quantify motion during free-breathing.

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Funding

Funding for this study was provided by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (CRDPJ-517413–17), MEDTEQ and the Cancer Research Society of Canada. Dr. An Tang was supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Santé and the Fondation de l'Association des Radiologistes du Québec (Career Award #34939).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) Research Center, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Rihab Mansour, An Tang & Samuel Kadoury

  2. Department of Computer and Software Engineering, Polytechnique Montreal, PO Box 6079, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Liset Vazquez Romaguera & Samuel Kadoury

  3. Department of Radiology, Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM), Montreal, QC, Canada

    Catherine Huet, Ahmed Bentridi, Kim-Nhien Vu, Jean-Sébastien Billiard & An Tang

  4. MR Clinical Science, Philips Healthcare Canada, Richmond Hill, Canada

    Guilllaume Gilbert

Authors
  1. Rihab Mansour
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  2. Liset Vazquez Romaguera
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  3. Catherine Huet
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  4. Ahmed Bentridi
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  5. Kim-Nhien Vu
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  7. Guilllaume Gilbert
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  8. An Tang
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  9. Samuel Kadoury
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Contributions

R. M. wrote the manuscript, developed the proposed models, and conducted the experiments. L. V. R. provided additional experiments. C. H. performed patient recruitment. A. B., K. V., and J. S. B. provided radiological evaluation and helped write the manuscript. G. B. provided MRI expertise. A. T. provided the clinical context and helped write the manuscript. S. K. assisted with oversight of the project and helped write the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Samuel Kadoury.

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Ethical statement

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Ethics approval was granted by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for human studies of the Centre Hospitalier Université de Montréal (CHUM). Informed patient consent was obtained through an IRB approved protocol at CHUM (# 15.388) to use imaging data.

Informed consent

All participants provided their formal consent to participate in this study.

Competing interests

Author G. Gilbert is an employee of Philips. All other author shave no conflicts of interest associated with this publication.

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Mansour, R., Romaguera, L.V., Huet, C. et al. Abdominal motion tracking with free-breathing XD-GRASP acquisitions using spatio-temporal geodesic trajectories. Med Biol Eng Comput 60, 583–598 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-021-02477-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-021-02477-w

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