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Current deep learning-based manifold learning algorithms such as the variational autoencoder (VAE) require fully sampled data to learn the probability density of real-world datasets. However, fully sampled data is often unavailable in a variety of problems, including the recovery of dynamic and high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We introduce a novel variational approach to learn a manifold from undersampled data. The VAE uses a decoder fed by latent vectors, drawn from a conditional density estimated from the fully sampled images using an encoder. Since fully sampled images are not available in our setting, we approximate the conditional density of the latent vectors by a parametric model whose parameters are estimated from the undersampled measurements using back-propagation. We use the framework for the joint alignment and recovery of multi-slice free breathing and ungated cardiac MRI data from highly undersampled measurements. Experimental results demonstrate the utility of the proposed scheme in dynamic imaging alignment and reconstructions. [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]

As a follow-up to the first IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (TMI) special issue on the theme of deep tomographic reconstruction, the second special issue is assembled to reflect the status and momentum of this rapidly emerging field. In this editorial, we provide a brief background illustrating the motivation for the development of network-based, data-driven, and learning-oriented reconstruction methods, summarize the included papers, and report our verification of the shared deep learning codes. Finally, we discuss several important research topics to facilitate further investigation and collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a generative smoothness regularization on manifolds (SToRM) model for the recovery of dynamic image data from highly undersampled measurements. The model assumes that the images in the dataset are non-linear mappings of low-dimensional latent vectors. We use the deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to represent the non-linear transformation. The parameters of the generator as well as the low-dimensional latent vectors are jointly estimated only from the undersampled measurements. This approach is different from traditional CNN approaches that require extensive fully sampled training data. We penalize the norm of the gradients of the non-linear mapping to constrain the manifold to be smooth, while temporal gradients of the latent vectors are penalized to obtain a smoothly varying time-series. The proposed scheme brings in the spatial regularization provided by the convolutional network. The main benefit of the proposed scheme is the improvement in image quality and the orders-of-magnitude reduction in memory demand compared to traditional manifold models. To minimize the computational complexity of the algorithm, we introduce an efficient progressive training-in-time approach and an approximate cost function. These approaches speed up the image reconstructions and offers better reconstruction performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structured low-rank (SLR) algorithms, which exploit annihilation relations between the Fourier samples of a signal resulting from different properties, is a powerful image reconstruction framework in several applications. This scheme relies on low-rank matrix completion to estimate the annihilation relations from the measurements. The main challenge with this strategy is the high computational complexity of matrix completion. We introduce a deep learning (DL) approach to significantly reduce the computational complexity. Specifically, we use a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based filterbank that is trained to estimate the annihilation relations from imperfect (under-sampled and noisy) k-space measurements of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The main reason for the computational efficiency is the pre-learning of the parameters of the non-linear CNN from exemplar data, compared to SLR schemes that learn the linear filterbank parameters from the dataset itself. Experimental comparisons show that the proposed scheme can enable calibration-less parallel MRI; it can offer performance similar to SLR schemes while reducing the runtime by around three orders of magnitude. Unlike pre-calibrated and self-calibrated approaches, the proposed uncalibrated approach is insensitive to motion errors and affords higher acceleration. The proposed scheme also incorporates image domain priors that are complementary, thus significantly improving the performance over that of SLR schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a kernel low-rank algorithm to recover free-breathing and ungated dynamic MRI from spiral acquisitions without explicit k-space navigators. It is often challenging for low-rank methods to recover free-breathing and ungated images from undersampled measurements; extensive cardiac and respiratory motion often results in the Casorati matrix not being sufficiently low-rank. Therefore, we exploit the non-linear structure of the dynamic data, which gives the low-rank kernel matrix. Unlike prior work that rely on navigators to estimate the manifold structure, we propose a kernel low-rank matrix completion method to directly fill in the missing k-space data from variable density spiral acquisitions. We validate the proposed scheme using simulated data and in-vivo data. Our results show that the proposed scheme provides improved reconstructions compared to the classical methods such as low-rank and XD-GRASP. The comparison with breath-held cine data shows that the quantitative metrics agree, whereas the image quality is marginally lower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern MRI schemes, which rely on compressed sensing or deep learning algorithms to recover MRI data from undersampled multichannel Fourier measurements, are widely used to reduce the scan time. The image quality of these approaches is heavily dependent on the sampling pattern. In this article, we introduce a continuous strategy to optimize the sampling pattern and the network parameters jointly. We use a multichannel forward model, consisting of a non-uniform Fourier transform with continuously defined sampling locations, to realize the data consistency block within a model-based deep learning image reconstruction scheme. This approach facilitates the joint and continuous optimization of the sampling pattern and the CNN parameters to improve image quality. We observe that the joint optimization of the sampling patterns and the reconstruction module significantly improves the performance of most deep learning reconstruction algorithms. The source code of the proposed joint learning framework is available at https://github.com/hkaggarwal/J-MoDL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a model-based deep learning architecture termed MoDL-MUSSELS for the correction of phase errors in multishot diffusion-weighted echo-planar MR images. The proposed algorithm is a generalization of the existing MUSSELS algorithm with similar performance but significantly reduced computational complexity. In this work, we show that an iterative re-weighted least-squares implementation of MUSSELS alternates between a multichannel filter bank and the enforcement of data consistency. The multichannel filter bank projects the data to the signal subspace, thus exploiting the annihilation relations between shots. Due to the high computational complexity of the self-learned filter bank, we propose replacing it with a convolutional neural network (CNN) whose parameters are learned from exemplary data. The proposed CNN is a hybrid model involving a multichannel CNN in the k-space and another CNN in the image space. The k-space CNN exploits the annihilation relations between the shot images, while the image domain network is used to project the data to an image manifold. The experiments show that the proposed scheme can yield reconstructions that are comparable to state-of-the-art methods while offering several orders of magnitude reduction in run-time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperspectral image (HSI) restoration is an important preprocessing step in HSI data analysis to improve the image quality for subsequent applications of HSI. In this article, we introduce a spatial–spectral patch-based nonconvex sparsity and low-rank regularization method for HSI restoration. In contrast to traditional approaches based on convex penalties or nonconvex spectral penalty alone, we consider the sparsity of HSI in the spatial–spectral domain and combine the nonconvex low-rank penalty and the nonconvex 3-D total variation (TV)-like sparsity regularization to fully exploit the correlations in both spatial–spectral dimensions of the HSI data set. In addition, we propose a fast iterative variable splitting-based algorithm to effectively solve the corresponding optimization problem. Numerical experiments on both simulated and real HSI data sets demonstrate that the proposed nonconvex low-rank and TV (NonLRTV) method significantly improves the recovered image quality compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we provide a detailed review of recent advances in the recovery of continuous-domain multidimensional signals from their few nonuniform (multichannel) measurements using structured low-rank (SLR) matrix completion formulation. This framework is centered on the fundamental duality between the compactness (e.g., sparsity) of the continuous signal and the rank of a structured matrix, whose entries are functions of the signal. This property enables the reformulation of the signal recovery as an SLR matrix completion problem, which includes performance guarantees. We also review fast algorithms that are comparable in complexity to current compressed sensing (CS) methods, which enable the framework's application to large-scale magnetic resonance (MR) recovery problems. The remarkable flexibility of the formulation can be used to exploit signal properties that are difficult to capture by current sparse and low-rank optimization strategies. We demonstrate the utility of the framework in a wide range of MR imaging (MRI) applications, including highly accelerated imaging, calibration-free acquisition, MR artifact correction, and ungated dynamic MRI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a continuous domain framework for the recovery of a planar curve from a few samples. We model the curve as the zero level set of a trigonometric polynomial. We show that the exponential feature maps of the points on the curve lie on a low-dimensional subspace. We show that the null-space vector of the feature matrix can be used to uniquely identify the curve, given a sufficient number of samples. The worst-case theoretical guarantees show that the number of samples required for unique recovery depends on the bandwidth of the underlying trigonometric polynomial, which is a measure of the complexity of the curve. We introduce an iterative algorithm that relies on the low-rank property of the feature maps to recover the curves when the samples are noisy or when the true bandwidth of the curve is unknown. We also demonstrate the preliminary utility of the proposed curve representation in the context of image segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of missing entries in data often creates challenges for pattern recognition algorithms. Traditional algorithms for clustering data assume that all the feature values are known for every data point. We propose a method to cluster data in the presence of missing information. Unlike conventional clustering techniques where every feature is known for each point, our algorithm can handle cases where a few feature values are unknown for every point. For this more challenging problem, we provide theoretical guarantees for clustering using a $l_0$ fusion penalty based optimization problem. Furthermore, we propose an algorithm to solve a relaxation of this problem using saturating non-convex fusion penalties. It is observed that this algorithm produces solutions that degrade gradually with an increase in the fraction of missing feature values. We demonstrate the utility of the proposed method using a simulated dataset, the Wine dataset and the ASL dataset. It is shown that the proposed method is a promising clustering technique for datasets with large fractions of missing entries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a local manifold regularization approach to recover dynamic MRI data from highly undersampled measurements. The proposed scheme relies on the manifold structure of local image patches at the same spatial location in a free-breathing cardiac MRI dataset; this approach is a generalization of the SmooThness Regularization on Manifolds (SToRM) scheme that exploits the global manifold structure of images in the dataset. Since the manifold structure of the patches varies depending on the spatial location and is often considerably simpler than the global one, this approach significantly reduces the data demand, facilitating the recovery from shorter scans. Since the navigator-based estimation of manifold structure pursued in SToRM is not feasible in this setting, a reformulation of SToRM is introduced. Specifically, the regularization term of the cost function involves the sum of robust distances between images sub-patches in the dataset. The optimization algorithm alternates between updating the images and estimating the manifold structure of the image patches. The utility of the proposed scheme is demonstrated in the context of $\textit {in-vivo}$ prospective free-breathing cardiac CINE MRI imaging with multichannel acquisitions and simulated phantoms. The new framework facilitates a reduction in scan time, as compared to the SToRM strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent theory of mapping an image into a structured low-rank Toeplitz or Hankel matrix has become an effective method to restore images. In this paper, we introduce a generalized structured low-rank algorithm to recover images from their undersampled Fourier coefficients using infimal convolution regularizations. The image is modeled as the superposition of a piecewise constant component and a piecewise linear component. The Fourier coefficients of each component satisfy an annihilation relation, which results in a structured Toeplitz matrix. We exploit the low-rank property of the matrices to formulate a combined regularized optimization problem. In order to solve the problem efficiently and to avoid the high-memory demand resulting from the large-scale Toeplitz matrices, we introduce a fast and a memory-efficient algorithm based on the half-circulant approximation of the Toeplitz matrix. We demonstrate our algorithm in the context of single and multi-channel MR images recovery. Numerical experiments indicate that the proposed algorithm provides improved recovery performance over the state-of-the-art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a structured low rank algorithm for the calibration-free compensation of field inhomogeneity artifacts in echo planar imaging (EPI) MRI data. We acquire the data using two EPI readouts that differ in echo-time. Using time segmentation, we reformulate the field inhomogeneity compensation problem as the recovery of an image time series from highly undersampled Fourier measurements. The temporal profile at each pixel is modeled as a single exponential, which is exploited to fill in the missing entries. We show that the exponential behavior at each pixel, along with the spatial smoothness of the exponential parameters, can be exploited to derive a 3-D annihilation relation in the Fourier domain. This relation translates to a low rank property on a structured multi-fold Toeplitz matrix, whose entries correspond to the measured k-space samples. We introduce a fast two-step algorithm for the completion of the Toeplitz matrix from the available samples. In the first step, we estimate the null space vectors of the Toeplitz matrix using only its fully sampled rows. The null space is then used to estimate the signal subspace, which facilitates the efficient recovery of the time series of images. We finally demonstrate the proposed approach on spherical MR phantom data and human data and show that the artifacts are significantly reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]