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Summary: In the direction of arrival (DoA) estimation, typically sensor arrays are used where the number of required sensors can be large depending on the application. With the help of compressed sensing (CS), hardware complexity of the sensor array system can be reduced since reliable estimations are possible by using the compressed measurements where the compression is done by measurement matrices. After the compression, DoAs are reconstructed by using sparsity promoting algorithms such as alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). For the given procedure, both the measurement matrix design and the reconstruction algorithm may include computationally intensive operations, which are addressed in this study. The presented simulation results imply the feasibility of the system in real‐time processing with energy efficient implementations. We propose employing parallel programming to satisfy the real‐time processing requirements. While the measurement matrix design has been accelerated 16× with CPU based parallel version with respect to the fastest serial implementation, ADMM based DoA estimation has been improved 1.1× with GPU based parallel version compared to the fastest CPU parallel implementation. In addition, we achieved, to the best of our knowledge, the first energy‐efficient real‐time DoA estimation on embedded Jetson GPGPUs in 15 W power consumption without affecting the DoA accuracy performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi‐contrast images are commonly acquired together to maximize complementary diagnostic information, albeit at the expense of longer scan times. A time‐efficient strategy to acquire high‐quality multi‐contrast images is to accelerate individual sequences and then reconstruct undersampled data with joint regularization terms that leverage common information across contrasts. However, these terms can cause features that are unique to a subset of contrasts to leak into the other contrasts. Such leakage‐of‐features may appear as artificial tissues, thereby misleading diagnosis. The goal of this study is to develop a compressive sensing method for multi‐channel multi‐contrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that optimally utilizes shared information while preventing feature leakage. Joint regularization terms group sparsity and colour total variation are used to exploit common features across images while individual sparsity and total variation are also used to prevent leakage of distinct features across contrasts. The multi‐channel multi‐contrast reconstruction problem is solved via a fast algorithm based on Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers. The proposed method is compared against using only individual and only joint regularization terms in reconstruction. Comparisons were performed on single‐channel simulated and multi‐channel in‐vivo datasets in terms of reconstruction quality and neuroradiologist reader scores. The proposed method demonstrates rapid convergence and improved image quality for both simulated and in‐vivo datasets. Furthermore, while reconstructions that solely use joint regularization terms are prone to leakage‐of‐features, the proposed method reliably avoids leakage via simultaneous use of joint and individual terms, thereby holding great promise for clinical use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is a relatively new method to image the spatial distribution of magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) tracers administered to the body with high spatial and temporal resolution using an inhomogeneous magnetic field. The spatial information of the MNP's is encoded using a field free point (FFP), or a field free line (FFL), in which the magnetic field vanishes at a point, or on a line, respectively. FFL scanning has the advantage of improved sensitivity compared to FFP scanning as a result of higher signal‐to‐noise ratio. The trajectory traversed by the FFL or FFP is an important parameter of the MPI system and should be selected to achieve the best imaging quality in minimum scan time, while considering hardware constraints and patient safety. In this study, we analyzed the image quality of different FFL trajectories for a large field of view (FOV) using simulations, to provide a baseline information for FFL scanning MPI system design. Methods: We simulated a human‐sized FFL scanning MPI configuration to image a circular FOV with 160 mm diameter, and compared Radial, Spiral, Uniform Spiral, Flower, and Lissajous trajectories with different trajectory densities scanned by the FFL for constant scan time. We analyzed the system matrices of the trajectories in terms of mutual coherence and homogeneity of the spatial sensitivity. We calculated the maximum electric fields induced on a homogeneous conductive body by the selection field (SF) and the focus field (FF) to compare the trajectories based on the nerve stimulation threshold. The images were obtained using the system matrix reconstruction approach with two different image reconstruction methods. In the first one, we used the conventional image reconstruction method, algebraic reconstruction technique (ART), which gives a regularized least‐squares solution. In the second one, we used the state‐of‐the‐art alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), which minimizes a weighted sum of the l1‐norm and the total variation (TV) of the images. Results: The Radial and Spiral trajectories resulted in a poor imaging performance at low trajectory densities due to relatively high coherency and poor sensitivity of the measurements, respectively. For ART reconstruction, the highest image quality with the lowest trajectory density was achieved with the Uniform Spiral trajectory. Uniform Spiral, Flower, and Lissajous trajectories yielded comparable performance with ADMM reconstruction. The rotating SF induced higher electric field amplitude compared to the FF. Consequently, maximum allowable gradient at the same trajectory density was greater for the Radial trajectory compared to the other trajectories. Conclusions: For a large FOV coverage, the Uniform Spiral trajectory offers a good compromise between image quality and imaging time, taking safety and hardware limitations into account. The Radial trajectory, especially using l1‐norm and TV priors in the reconstruction, may be favorable in case the SF induced electric field is higher than that of the FF at the same frequency (e.g., relatively small FOV coverage). In general, ADMM reconstruction resulted in higher contrast and resolution compared to ART, leading to lighter requirements on the density of the trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]