System and method for accelerated, time-resolved imaging
A system and method for reconstructing a series of images of a subject includes acquiring medical image data from the subject with a medical imaging system and reconstructing a series of images of the subject from the acquired medical image data set. The reconstructing includes enforcing general adherence to a non-patient-specific signal model that describes a dependency of image intensity values on at least one variable that is associated with a physical or physiological property by constraining reconstruction of individual images in the series of images using the non-patient-specific model. The reconstructing also includes preserving information in the series of images that deviate from the non-patient-specific model by controlling a requirement of consistency with the non-patient-specific model.
1. A method for reconstructing a series of images of a subject, the steps of the method comprising:
a) acquiring medical image data from the subject with a medical imaging system; and
b) reconstructing a series of images of the subject from the acquired medical image data set while constraining individual images in the series of images to be consistent with a non-patient-specific model that describes a dependency of image intensity values to at least one variable that is associated with a physical property of the subject and to be consistent with a motion correction operator.
2. The method of claim 1 further comprising estimating the motion correction operator by:
acquiring motion tracking data and estimating the motion correction operator from the motion tracking data;
estimating the motion correction operator by co-registering each image in the series of images another image in the series of images; or
adaptively estimating the motion correction operator during the reconstruction.
3. The method of claim 1 further comprising preserving information in the series of images that deviate from the non-patient-specific model by controlling a requirement of consistency with the non-patient-specific model.
4. The method of claim 3 wherein controlling the requirement of consistency with the non-patient-specific model is performed by relaxing the requirement of consistency with the non-patient-specific model if a fit with the non-patient-specific model is undesirable for a given pixel in an image in the series of images.
5. The method of claim 3 wherein reconstructing the series of images includes performing an iterative reconstruction process and wherein controlling the requirement of consistency with the non-patient-specific model is performed by relaxing the requirement of consistency with the non-patient-specific model if a fit with the non-patient-specific model is undesirable for a given pixel in an image in the series of images.
6. The method of claim 3 wherein reconstructing the series of images includes performing an iterative reconstruction process and wherein reconstructing the series of images of the subject includes iteratively minimizing an optimization problem having a data-fidelity term and a non-patient-specific, model-based term.
7. The method of claim 1 wherein the non-patient-specific model includes contrast bolus propagation dynamics.
8. The method of claim 1 wherein the non-patient-specific model functions as a priori knowledge about the patient during the reconstructing.