Image processing apparatus, image processing method, and magnetic resonance imaging system

1. An image processing apparatus comprising processing circuitry configured to:

Select, from a plurality of diffusion-weighted images with different applied directions of a motion probing gradient magnetic field pulse or different diffusion sensitive coefficients, a diffusion-weighted image based on a predetermined condition which includes structural sharpness or similarity between each of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images and a reference image for which the diffusion sensitive coefficient is set to a reference value;

register the selected diffusion-weighted image with a reference image to correct the selected diffusion-weighted image; and

register the corrected diffusion-weighted image with each of the other diffusion-weighted images of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images to correct each of the other diffusion-weighted images.

2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the processing circuitry is configured to correct the selected diffusion-weighted image by using an image with the diffusion sensitive coefficient set to zero as the reference image.

3. The image processing apparatus according to claim 2 , wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to estimate structural sharpness of each diffusion-weighted image according to local variogram of each of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images.

4. The image processing apparatus according to claim 2 , wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to

determine an average image of at least some of the diffusion-weighted images among the plurality of diffusion-weighted images; and

estimate distortion degree of each diffusion-weighted image according to each of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images and the average image.

5. The image processing apparatus according to claim 4 , wherein the processing circuitry is configured to

estimate an offset component of the distortion degree of each diffusion-weighted image according to the difference between a position of centroid point of each of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images and that of the average image; and

estimate a rotation component of the distortion degree of each diffusion-weighted image according to the difference between an angle of a principle axis of each of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images and that of the average image.

6. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the processing circuitry selects the diffusion-weighted image based on distortion degree and the structural sharpness for each of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images as the predetermined condition.

7. The image processing apparatus according to claim 6 , wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to

determine an average image of at least some of the diffusion-weighted images among the plurality of diffusion-weighted images; and

estimate the structural sharpness of each diffusion-weighted image according to each of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images and the average image.

8. The image processing apparatus according to claim 7 , wherein the processing circuitry estimates the structural sharpness of each diffusion-weighted image according to sum of squared difference between each diffusion-weighted image and the average image.

9. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to determine the similarity and select the diffusion-weighted image according to the similarity as the predetermined condition.

10. An image processing apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to generate a diffusion tensor image by using the plurality of diffusion-weighted images corrected.

11. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system comprising processing circuitry configured to:

select, from a plurality of diffusion-weighted images with different applied directions of a motion probing gradient magnetic field pulse or different diffusion sensitive coefficients, a diffusion-weighted image based on a predetermined condition which includes structural sharpness or similarity between each of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images and a reference image for which the diffusion sensitive coefficient is set to a reference value;

register the selected diffusion-weighted image with the reference image to correct the selected diffusion-weighted image; and

register the corrected diffusion-weighted image with each of the other diffusion-weighted images of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images to correct each of the other diffusion-weighted images.

12. An image processing method comprising:

Selecting, from a plurality of diffusion-weighted image with different applied directions of a motion probing gradient magnetic field pulse or different diffusion sensitive coefficients, a diffusion-weighted image based on a predetermined condition which includes structural sharpness or similarity between each of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images and a reference image for which the diffusion sensitive coefficient is set to a reference value;

registering the selected diffusion-weighted image with the reference image to correct the selected diffusion-weighted image; and

registering the corrected diffusion-weighted image with each of the other diffusion-weighted images of the plurality of diffusion-weighted images to correct each of the other diffusion-weighted images.