Suppression of slice selection axis motion artifacts in MRI

Patient motion during data acquisition in magnetic resonance imaging causes artifacts in the reconstructed image, which for two-dimensional Fourier transform imaging techniques appear as blurring and ghost repetitions of the moving structures. T. Mitsa et al. (1990) proposed a technique for suppressing artifacts from periodic motion along the slice selection axis. A different approach to the same problem is presented which is not restricted to periodic motion. The algorithm is verified using a simulated phantom and motion. It is also shown to perform well in the presence of noise and motion within the imaging plane.     

Correction of computed tomography motion artifacts using pixel-specific back-projection

Cardiac and respiratory motion can cause artifacts in computed tomography scans of the chest. The authors describe a new method for reducing these artifacts called pixel-specific back-projection (PSBP). PSBP reduces artifacts caused by in-plane motion by reconstructing each pixel in a frame of reference that moves with the in-plane motion in the volume being scanned. The motion of the frame of reference is specified by constructing maps that describe the motion of each pixel in the image at the time each projection was measured; these maps are based on measurements of the in-plane motion. PSBP has been tested in computer simulations and with volunteer data. In computer simulations, PSBP removed the structured artifacts caused by motion. In scans of two volunteers, PSBP reduced doubling and streaking in chest scans to a level that made the images clinically useful. PSBP corrections of liver scans were less satisfactory because the motion of the liver is predominantly superior-inferior (S-I). PSBP uses a unique set of motion parameters to describe the motion at each point in the chest as opposed to requiring that the motion be described by a single set of parameters. Therefore, PSBP may be more useful in correcting clinical scans than are other correction techniques previously described.     

Correcting bulk in-plane motion artifacts in MRI using the point spread function

A technique is proposed for correcting both translational and rotational motion artifacts in magnetic resonance imaging without the need to collect additional navigator data or to perform intensive postprocessing. The method is based on measuring the point spread function (PSF) by attaching one or two point-sized markers to the main imaging object. Following the isolation of a PSF marker from the acquired image, translational motion could be corrected directly from the modulation transfer function, without the need to determine the object's positions during the scan, although the shifts could be extracted if desired. Rotation is detected by analyzing the relative displacements of two such markers. The technique was evaluated with simulations, phantom and in vivo experiments.     

Electrode motion artifacts in electrical impedance pneumography

For electrical impedance pneumography, we measured electrode motion artifacts for four different electrode circuits (bipolar, tetrapolar, guarded bipolar, and guarded tetrapolar). Experiments used 10 different electrode configurations each with 4 different subject activities on 10 subjects. These show that 1) the common small-area bipolar electrode configuration is the worst in several measures of artifact sensitivity; 2) increasing the electrode area from 0.8 to 33 cm2 reduces the mean compliant, arm-motion and body-motion artifacts to 57, 45, and 32 percent, respectively, of normal; 3) changing the circuit from bipolar to tetrapolar without changing area changes these artifacts to 106, 65, and 65 percent of normal; 4) changing the circuit from bipolar to guarded bipolar without changing area reduces these artifacts to 87, 57, and 55 percent of normal; and 5) changing the circuit from guarded bipolar to guarded tetrapolar without changing area changes these artifacts to 106, 91, and 110 percent of normal. These results suggest that developers of apnea monitors use larger area electrodes and consider use of a tetrapolar or guarded bipolar circuit.     

Reducing chemical shift artifacts in MRI in time-varying gradients

An image processing algorithm to reduce chemical shift artifacts in MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) with time-varying gradients and to obtain the chemical shift images without increasing the imaging time is presented. It is known that when both gradients in two directions of the imaging plane are time-varying, such as in the spiral-type scanning MRI, the chemical shift artifacts appear as a blurred image. The artifacts cannot be neglected, since the total power of the out-of-focus point spread function (PSF) for the blurred image equals that of the in-focus PSF. The proposed algorithm separates the chemical shift images by iteratively estimating the artifacts under an a priori constraint that the original images should have a real and nonnegative value. Computer simulation results show that the average amplitude of the artifacts can be reduced significantly after several iterations, and that the algorithm works well even when the observation noise exists.     

石英晶体光轴方向厚度的光学测量研究

给出了一种精确测量石英晶体光轴方向厚度的光学测量方法,其测量精度可以达到0.002mm。     

非正交轴系“激光经纬仪”视准轴校正方法

非正交轴系“激光经纬仪”(简称非正交轴 系经纬仪)在长时间的使用过程中视准轴参数发生微小的变化将会严重影响 测量精度,因此有必要对视准轴的参数进行校正。本文提出了一种基于非正交 轴系经纬仪前 方交会原理的视准轴参数校正方法,首先利用交会约束建立关于视准轴参数的非线性方程 组,然后通过 解方程组得到校正后的参数。为了验证方法的正确性,使用SolidWorks建立模型并 结合OpenGL 进行了仿真计算,然后进行了相应的实验。结果表明,本文方法能有效校准视准轴参数, 且具有很高的 精度;用本文方法对视准轴进行校正后,非正交轴系经纬仪测量系统的测量精度没有受到 影响。由于本文 校正方法不需要借助其他辅助仪器且校正过程简单,故可以在测量现场对视准轴进行实时 校正,具有一定的实用性。     

Reduction of motion artifacts using a two-frequency impedanceplethysmograph and adaptive filtering

The authors measured transthoracic impedance in nine presumed healthy adult subjects with a two-frequency plethysmograph at 57 kHz and 185 kHz. The measurement protocol included periods of normal breathing without motion and periods of motion without breathing. The authors analyzed the cross-correlation and the ratio between the signals at both frequencies for all the different maneuvers. The correlation coefficient was between 0.97 and 1 for breathing, the minimal cross-correlation (0.81) was for simulated obstructive apnea. The authors found that the amplitude ratio between the two-frequency signals was different for normal breathing and for motion. Based on these results, the authors designed and tested an adaptive filter to increase the signal-to-artifact ratio (SAR). The increase in SAR (mean±standard deviation) compared with the signal at 57 kHz was: 183%±117% for arm movement, 133%±93% for leg movement, and 34%±62% for simulated obstructive apnea     

Out-of-plane motion compensation in multislice spin-echo MRI

In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), it is well-known that patient motion plays a significant role in the degradation of image quality. Although the case of translational in-plane motion (x-y-motion) has been studied by several researchers, the effect of rigid, translational out-of-plane motion (z-motion) has not yet been completely analyzed due to its more complex nature. Out-of-plane motion introduces blurring along the slice-selection direction in addition to motion artifacts. Here, the authors present a model to represent the effect of out-of-plane motion on multislice MR data. The inversion of this model not only results in the correction of the artifacts due to out-of-plane motion, but also reduces blurring in the slice-selection direction, yielding higher resolution images. Because of the shift-varying nature of the authors' model, they propose to use a nonlinear postprocessing method, projection onto convex sets (POCS), for its inversion, provided that the motion kernel and the slice-selection profile are known. The proposed method has been tested on simulated data and then applied to actual MR data to demonstrate the feasibility of the technique in real imaging situations.     

Automatic correction of motion artifacts in magnetic resonanceimages using an entropy focus criterion

Presents the use of an entropy focus criterion to enable automatic focusing of motion corrupted magnetic resonance images. The authors demonstrate the principle using illustrative examples from cooperative volunteers. Their technique can determine unknown patient motion or use knowledge of motion from other measures as a starting estimate. The motion estimate is used to compensate the acquired data and is iteratively refined using the image entropy. Entropy focuses the whole image principally by favoring the removal of motion induced ghosts and blurring from otherwise dark regions of the image. Using only the image data, and no special hardware or pulse sequences, the authors demonstrate correction for arbitrary rigid-body translational motion in the imaging plane and for a single rotation. Extension to three-dimensional (3-D) and more general motion should be possible. The algorithm is able to determine volunteer motion well. The mean absolute deviation between algorithm and navigator-echo-determined motion is comparable to the displacement step size used in the algorithm. Local deviations from the recorded motion or navigator-determined motion are explained and the authors indicate how enhanced focus criteria may be derived. In all cases they were able to compensate images for patient motion, reducing blurring and ghosting     

Correction of residual motion errors in airborne SAR interferometry

The main limitation for a wider applicability of airborne repeat pass interferometric SAR data is the presence of small uncompensated motion errors. The effect of residual motion compensation errors is addressed and a new technique to minimise their influence on the interferometric phase is proposed     

抑制冠状动脉内超声图像序列运动伪影的离线门控方法

针对连续回撤导管采集的、覆盖多个心动周期的冠状动脉内超声(ICUS)图像序列中存在的运动伪影问题,采用图像分析技术,对ICUS图像序列进行离线门控,从而改善ICUS纵向视图的视觉效果。首先,通过逐帧比较ICUS图像的灰度特征,构造ICUS序列的差异矩阵;然后,从差异矩阵中搜索出具有最小累计差异值的路径,为各帧找到其在相邻心动周期中的对应帧;最后,在滤波后的差异矩阵中,沿最优路径找到表示在各相邻心动周期舒张末期采集的图像对的点,得到最终的门控序列。对临床采集ICUS序列的实验验证了方法的可行性和精度。     

Electrical characteristics of a-IGZO transistors along the in-plane axis during outward bending

A highly flexible amorphous indium–gallium–zinc–oxide (a-IGZO) thin film transistor (TFT) was tested with respect to the in-plane axis location and device architecture in a bending system. Short channel a-IGZO TFTs were fabricated based on the conventional coplanar configuration and the islanded structure on a polyimide (PI) substrate and were then subjected to a cyclic bending of 1 × 10⁵ with varying radii smaller than a few mm. Embedding the devices at a neutral position in bending system allowed them to function well when exposed to the induced mechanical strain, regardless of the difference in the structural geometry. However, placement of the TFTs outside of the neutral surface resulted in a drastic suppression of the strain-induced electrical failure for the island configuration as the distance of the TFTs from the neutral surface increased. By contrast, the conventional structure, when placed outside the neutral surface, showed strongly accelerated device failure as the strain on the TFTs was increased. The electromechanical integrity was maintained for island-structured TFTs under a bending stress with a radius of 1 mm and a position margin of 50 μm away from the neutral surface. The brittle and rigid characteristics of TFT arrays with inorganic components are still considered problematic in terms of being put into practical use in flexible applications; nevertheless, the high flexibility achieved by this structural design and its geometrical characterization along the in-plane axis shows the great potential for a-IGZO TFTs to serve as the functional building blocks of new platform applications, such as rolling or folding displays, by suppressing the mechanical strain in the backplane.     

MRI artifact cancellation due to rigid motion in the imaging plane

A post-processing technique has been developed to suppress the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) artifact arising from object planar rigid motion. In two-dimensional Fourier transform (2-DFT) MRI, rotational and translational motions of the target during magnetic resonance magnetic resonance (MR) scan respectively impose nonuniform sampling and a phase error an the collected MRI signal. The artifact correction method introduced considers the following three conditions: (1) for planar rigid motion with known parameters, a reconstruction algorithm based on bilinear interpolation and the super-position method is employed to remove the MRI artifact, (2) for planar rigid motion with known rotation angle and unknown translational motion (including an unknown rotation center), first, a super-position bilinear interpolation algorithm is used to eliminate artifact due to rotation about the center of the imaging plane, following which a phase correction algorithm is applied to reduce the remaining phase error of the MRI signal, and (3) to estimate unknown parameters of a rigid motion, a minimum energy method is proposed which utilizes the fact that planar rigid motion increases the measured energy of an ideal MR image outside the boundary of the imaging object; by using this property all unknown parameters of a typical rigid motion are accurately estimated in the presence of noise. To confirm the feasibility of employing the proposed method in a clinical setting, the technique was used to reduce unknown rigid motion artifact arising from the head movements of two volunteers.     

Blind deconvolution of spotted image based on slice selection of third-order moment

The 1D blind deconvolution algorithm using maximum time delay slice of the third-order moment ((MTDS-TOM) [Lu, W]) is extended to 2D blind deconvolution for spotted image deblurring. A scaled and shifted version of the image is obtained using a special slice selected from its third-order moment, which is estimated using a 4D blind deconvolution. An application of the proposed method for removing the optical blur of a microarray image is given.     

An approximation with poles along the negative real axis of the complex frequency plane

A time domain approximation of the type e^-etis developed and shown to be a rational function of s in the frequency domain. This approximation is considered as a transfer function which may be realized with RC or RL elements. Two examples illustrate the approximation method.     

Characterization of single-mode coated fibers at low temperatures using periodic distortion of the fiber axis

Microbending effects on cabled single-mode optical fibers are analyzed both theoretically and experimentally over the temperature range -30°C-25°C. The loss in single-mode fiber is attributed to the coupling between the guided and radiative modes caused by micro-bending effects. The primary coupling between the guided LP01and the radiative LP11modes is studied by imposing periodically controlled perturbations on the fiber axis at different temperatures.     

Correction of motion artifact in cardiac optical mapping using image registration

Cardiac motion is one of the main sources of artifacts in epifluorescence imaging experiments. It can cause significant error in electrophysiological measurements such as action potential duration. We present a novel approach that uses image registration based on maximization of mutual information to correct for in-plane cardiac motion in such experiments. The approach is relatively fast (a few seconds per frame) and is performed entirely post acquisition. The image registration approach is an alternative to traditional approaches such as mechanical restraint of the heart or addition of chemical uncouplers. Our results show that the image registration method significantly reduces motion-related artifacts in experimental data.