Incorporation of Prior Knowledge of Signal Behavior Into the Reconstruction to Accelerate the Acquisition of Diffusion MRI Data

Diffusion MRI data are generally acquired using hyperpolarized gases during patient breath-hold, which yields a compromise between achievable image resolution, lung coverage, and number of b-values. In this paper, we propose a novel method that accelerates the acquisition of diffusion MRI data by undersampling in both the spatial and b-value dimensions and incorporating knowledge about signal decay into the reconstruction (SIDER). SIDER is compared with total variation(TV) reconstructionby assessing its effect on both the recovery of ventilation images and the estimated mean alveolar dimensions (MADs). Both methods are assessed by retrospectively undersampling diffusion data sets (n=8) of healthy volunteers and patients.