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We introduce a model-based image reconstruction framework with a convolution neural network (CNN)-based regularization prior. The proposed formulation provides a systematic approach for deriving deep architectures for inverse problems with the arbitrary structure. Since the forward model is explicitly accounted for, a smaller network with fewer parameters is sufficient to capture the image information compared to direct inversion approaches. Thus, reducing the demand for training data and training time. Since we rely on end-to-end training with weight sharing across iterations, the CNN weights are customized to the forward model, thus offering improved performance over approaches that rely on pre-trained denoisers. Our experiments show that the decoupling of the number of iterations from the network complexity offered by this approach provides benefits, including lower demand for training data, reduced risk of overfitting, and implementations with significantly reduced memory footprint. We propose to enforce data-consistency by using numerical optimization blocks, such as conjugate gradients algorithm within the network. This approach offers faster convergence per iteration, compared to methods that rely on proximal gradients steps to enforce data consistency. Our experiments show that the faster convergence translates to improved performance, primarily when the available GPU memory restricts the number of iterations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bilinear models such as low-rank and dictionary methods, which decompose dynamic data to spatial and temporal factor matrices are powerful and memory-efficient tools for the recovery of dynamic MRI data. Current bilinear methods rely on sparsity and energy compaction priors on the factor matrices to regularize the recovery. Motivated by deep image prior, we introduce a novel bilinear model, whose factor matrices are generated using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). The CNN parameters, and equivalently the factors, are learned from the undersampled data of the specific subject. Unlike current unrolled deep learning methods that require the storage of all the time frames in the dataset, the proposed approach only requires the storage of the factors or compressed representation; this approach allows the direct use of this scheme to large-scale dynamic applications, including free breathing cardiac MRI considered in this work. To reduce the run time and to improve performance, we initialize the CNN parameters using existing factor methods. We use sparsity regularization of the network parameters to minimize the overfitting of the network to measurement noise. Our experiments on free-breathing and ungated cardiac cine data acquired using a navigated golden-angle gradient-echo radial sequence show the ability of our method to provide reduced spatial blurring as compared to classical bilinear methods as well as a recent unsupervised deep-learning approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]