Noise Reduction in Diffusion MRI Using Non-Local Self-Similar Information in Joint x −q Space

Diffusion MRI (DMRI) relies on its sensitivity to the displacement of water molecules to probe tissue microstructure. To be able to characterize fine microstructural details, the diffusion weighting (i.e., b-value) needs to be sufficiently high, allowing for example more accurate separation of fiber bundles crossing at small angles and greater sensitivity to the restricted diffusion of water molecules trapped inside axons. However, due to the significant attenuation of the MR signal at high diffusion weightings, the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) poses significant challenges to subsequent analysis.

Source: Medical Image Analysis - January 21, 2019 Category: Radiology Authors: Geng Chen, Yafeng Wu, Dinggang Shen, Pew-Thian Yap Source Type: research