Improved adaptive reconstruction of multichannel MR images

Purpose: To improve adaptive reconstruction of multichannel MR images by simultaneously removing nonsmooth phase and signal-loss imaging artifacts. Methods: The improved adaptive reconstruction consists of three steps: (1) modified multichannel images are first derived by dividing raw multichannel images by a reference image (i.e., a normalized single-channel image); (2) the modified multichannel images are smoothed by a low-pass filter; (3) adaptive spatial matched filters determined from the smoothed multichannel images are utilized to obtain multichannel combined images. Numerical simulations, as well as MRI experiments, on phantoms and human subjects are performed to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of this improved adaptive reconstruction approach against traditional coil combination methods. Results: Both simulation and MRI experimental results demonstrated that the proposed improved adaptive reconstruction method is able to obtain combined images with reduced nonsmooth phase and signal-loss imaging artifacts. Conclusions: A novel multichannel image reconstruction method is developed that produces high quality multichannel combined images. (C) 2015 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.