Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging techniques are used to measure biophysical properties of tissues. As clinical diagnoses are mainly based on the evaluation of contrast in MR images, relaxation times assume a fundamental role providing a major source of contrast. Moreover, they can give useful information in cancer diagnostic. In this paper we present a statistical technique to estimate relaxation times exploiting complex-valued MR images. Working in the complex domain instead of the amplitude one allows us to consider the data bivariate Gaussian distributed, and thus to implement a simple Least Square (LS) estimator on the available complex data. The proposed estimator results to be simple, accurate and unbiased.
Relaxation time estimation from complex magnetic resonance images
BASELICE, FABIO;FERRAIOLI, GIAMPAOLO;PASCAZIO, Vito
2010-01-01
Abstract
Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging techniques are used to measure biophysical properties of tissues. As clinical diagnoses are mainly based on the evaluation of contrast in MR images, relaxation times assume a fundamental role providing a major source of contrast. Moreover, they can give useful information in cancer diagnostic. In this paper we present a statistical technique to estimate relaxation times exploiting complex-valued MR images. Working in the complex domain instead of the amplitude one allows us to consider the data bivariate Gaussian distributed, and thus to implement a simple Least Square (LS) estimator on the available complex data. The proposed estimator results to be simple, accurate and unbiased.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
