English

Generalized super-resolution 4D Flow MRI $\unicode{x2013}$ using ensemble learning to extend across the cardiovascular system

Image and Video Processing 2023-11-23 v2 Artificial Intelligence Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Machine Learning Quantitative Methods

Abstract

4D Flow Magnetic Resonance Imaging (4D Flow MRI) is a non-invasive measurement technique capable of quantifying blood flow across the cardiovascular system. While practical use is limited by spatial resolution and image noise, incorporation of trained super-resolution (SR) networks has potential to enhance image quality post-scan. However, these efforts have predominantly been restricted to narrowly defined cardiovascular domains, with limited exploration of how SR performance extends across the cardiovascular system; a task aggravated by contrasting hemodynamic conditions apparent across the cardiovasculature. The aim of our study was to explore the generalizability of SR 4D Flow MRI using a combination of heterogeneous training sets and dedicated ensemble learning. With synthetic training data generated across three disparate domains (cardiac, aortic, cerebrovascular), varying convolutional base and ensemble learners were evaluated as a function of domain and architecture, quantifying performance on both in-silico and acquired in-vivo data from the same three domains. Results show that both bagging and stacking ensembling enhance SR performance across domains, accurately predicting high-resolution velocities from low-resolution input data in-silico. Likewise, optimized networks successfully recover native resolution velocities from downsampled in-vivo data, as well as show qualitative potential in generating denoised SR-images from clinical level input data. In conclusion, our work presents a viable approach for generalized SR 4D Flow MRI, with ensemble learning extending utility across various clinical areas of interest.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2311.11819,
  title  = {Generalized super-resolution 4D Flow MRI $\unicode{x2013}$ using ensemble learning to extend across the cardiovascular system},
  author = {Leon Ericsson and Adam Hjalmarsson and Muhammad Usman Akbar and Edward Ferdian and Mia Bonini and Brandon Hardy and Jonas Schollenberger and Maria Aristova and Patrick Winter and Nicholas Burris and Alexander Fyrdahl and Andreas Sigfridsson and Susanne Schnell and C. Alberto Figueroa and David Nordsletten and Alistair A. Young and David Marlevi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.11819},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T13:26:07.109Z