NeRP: Implicit Neural Representation Learning With Prior Embedding for Sparsely Sampled Image Reconstruction

Image reconstruction is an inverse problem that solves for a computational image based on sampled sensor measurement. Sparsely sampled image reconstruction poses additional challenges due to limited measurements. In this work, we propose a methodology of implicit Neural Representation learning with Prior embedding (NeRP) to reconstruct a computational image from sparsely sampled measurements. The method differs fundamentally from previous deep learning-based image reconstruction approaches in that NeRP exploits the internal information in an image prior and the physics of the sparsely sampled measurements to produce a representation of the unknown subject. No large-scale data is required to train the NeRP except for a prior image and sparsely sampled measurements. In addition, we demonstrate that NeRP is a general methodology that generalizes to different imaging modalities such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We also show that NeRP can robustly capture the subtle yet significant image changes required for assessing tumor progression.