A novel approach for high-resolution image reconstruction for in-vivo fetal brain MRI

Cedric Clouchoux (1) , Pierrick Coupé (1) , José V. Manjón (2) , Nicolas Guizard (1) , Marine Bouyssi-Kobar (1) , Mylene Lefebvre (1) , Adre Du Plessis (1) , Alan Evans (1) , Catherine Limperopoulos (1)

1 MNI - McConnell Brain Imaging Centre
2 ITACA

In the present study, we propose an automatic framework for obtaining an accurate representation of the in-vivo fetal brain for the quantification of cerebral volume and cortical surface. One of the biggest challenges in performing non-sedated fetal MRI studies is fetal motion, resulting in motion artifact an poor image quality. To date, most conventional fetal MRI acquisitions will have a 1x1x2mm3 resolution. The challenge is then to recover a high image quality from such volumes, in order to reliably characterize cortical development during intra-uterine life. Typically, three fetal scans are acquired, one in each direction, providing high in-plane resolution slices in each direction. The problem is then to create a single, isotropic high-resolution volume. This reconstruction is detailed herein, as well as results based on synthetic and real fetal data. An example of fetal cortical surface rendering is also presented.

Domaines: Imagerie médicale

Cedric Clouchoux, Pierrick Coupé, José V. Manjón, Nicolas Guizard, Marine Bouyssi-Kobar, et al.. A novel approach for high-resolution image reconstruction for in-vivo fetal brain MRI. Organization for Human Brain Mapping 2010 Annual Meeting, Jun 2010, United States. ⟨hal-00645477⟩