To develop a three-dimensional (two dimensions + time) convolutional neural network trained with displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) data for displacement and strain analysis of cine MRI. In this retrospective multicenter study, a deep learning model (StrainNet) was developed to predict intramyocardial displacement from contour motion. Patients with various heart diseases and healthy controls underwent cardiac MRI examinations with DENSE between August 2008 and January 2022. Network training inputs were a time series of myocardial contours from DENSE magnitude images, and ground truth data were DENSE displacement measurements. Model performance was evaluated using pixelwise end-point error (EPE). For testing, StrainNet was applied to contour motion from cine MRI. Global and segmental circumferential strain (E_cc) derived from commercial feature tracking (FT), StrainNet, and DENSE (reference) were compared using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), Pearson correlations, Bland-Altman analyses, paired t tests, and linear mixed-effects models. The study included 161 patients (110 men; mean age, 61 years ± 14 [SD]), 99 healthy adults (44 men; mean age, 35 years ± 15), and 45 healthy children and adolescents (21 males; mean age, 12 years ± 3). StrainNet showed good agreement with DENSE for intramyocardial displacement, with an average EPE of 0.75 mm ± 0.35. The ICCs between StrainNet and DENSE and FT and DENSE were 0.87 and 0.72, respectively, for global E_cc and 0.75 and 0.48, respectively, for segmental E_cc. Bland-Altman analysis showed that StrainNet had better agreement than FT with DENSE for global and segmental E_cc. StrainNet outperformed FT for global and segmental E_cc analysis of cine MRI. Keywords: Image Postprocessing, MR Imaging, Cardiac, Heart, Pediatrics, Technical Aspects, Technology Assessment, Strain, Deep Learning, DENSE Supplemental material is available for this article. © RSNA, 2023

In diffusion magnetic resonance imaging, accurate and reliable estimation of intravoxel fiber architectures is a major prerequisite for tractography algorithms or any other derived statistical analysis. Several methods have been proposed that estimate intravoxel fiber architectures using low angular resolution acquisitions owing to their shorter acquisition time and relatively low b -values. But these methods are highly sensitive to noise. In this work, we propose a nonconvex regularized blind compressed sensing approach to estimate intravoxel fiber architectures in low angular resolution acquisitions. The method models diffusion-weighted (DW) signals as a sparse linear combination of unfixed reconstruction basis functions and introduces a nonconvex regularizer to enhance the noise immunity. We present a general solving framework to simultaneously estimate the sparse coefficients and the reconstruction basis. Experiments on synthetic, phantom, and real human brain DW images demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach.

Diffusion tensor imaging and high angular resolution diffusion imaging are often used to analyze the fiber complexity of tissues. In these imaging techniques, the most commonly calculated metric is anisotropy, such as fractional anisotropy (FA), generalized anisotropy (GA), and generalized fractional anisotropy (GFA). The basic idea underlying these metrics is to compute the deviation from free or spherical diffusion. However, in many cases, the question is not really to know whether it concerns spherical diffusion. Instead, the main concern is to describe and quantify fiber complexity such as fiber crossing in a voxel. In this context, it would be more direct and effective to compute the deviation from a single fiber bundle instead of a sphere. We propose a new metric, called PEAM (PEAnut Metric), which is based on computing the deviation of orientation diffusion functions (ODFs) from a single fiber bundle ODF represented by a peanut. As an example, the proposed PEAM metric is used to classify intravoxel fiber configurations. The results on simulated data, physical phantom data and real brain data consistently showed that the proposed PEAM provides greater accuracy than FA, GA and GFA and enables parallel and complex fibers to be better distinguished.