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Pia Callmer

Publications and source records attributed to Pia Callmer.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Spectrally optimized implicit neural representations mitigate acquisition-related image quality trade-offs in intracranial 4D Flow MRI

4D Flow MRI promises opportunities for non-invasive mapping of neurovascular hemodynamics, but its clinical utility faces trade-offs between resolution, acquisition time, and noise. Deep learning-based super-resolution offers a post-scan solution, but supervised approaches require paired or domain-specific data, while patient-specific physics-informed models can be computationally demanding. This creates a need for unsupervised reconstruction models that can adapt to individual acquisitions without paired high-resolution training data, while remaining robust across anatomy, disease severity, and acquisition quality. To address this, we introduce a spectrally tuned implicit neural representation (INR) framework for intracranial 4D Flow MRI, representing the velocity field as a continuous coordinate-based neural field using WIRE activation functions with tunable spectral bias. Data-driven and physics-informed variants were evaluated in nine cerebrovascular cases spanning healthy controls and moderate-to-severe intracranial atherosclerotic disease, using CFD-derived high-resolution reference fields, MR-realistic synthetic low-resolution inputs, and direct fitting to acquired in-vivo data. Cohort-optimal spectral-bias settings generalized across subjects with only small increases in relative error compared with subject-specific optima, reducing the need for case-specific hyperparameter tuning. Physics-informed regularization provided modest additional accuracy but required substantially longer optimization, whereas the data-driven INR achieved near-comparable reconstruction performance within minutes. The framework also remained robust to acquisition-realistic noise and moderate VENC-dependent aliasing. These findings establish spectrally optimized INRs as a flexible unsupervised approach for mitigating acquisition-related trade-offs in intracranial 4D Flow MRI.

eess.IV↗

Deep learning for temporal super-resolution 4D Flow MRI

4D Flow Magnetic Resonance Imaging (4D Flow MRI) is a non-invasive technique for volumetric, time-resolved blood flow quantification. However, apparent trade-offs between acquisition time, image noise, and resolution limit clinical applicability. In particular, in regions of highly transient flow, coarse temporal resolution can hinder accurate capture of physiologically relevant flow variations. To overcome these issues, post-processing techniques using deep learning have shown promising results to enhance resolution post-scan using so-called super-resolution networks. However, while super-resolution has been focusing on spatial upsampling, temporal super-resolution remains largely unexplored. The aim of this study was therefore to implement and evaluate a residual network for temporal super-resolution 4D Flow MRI. To achieve this, an existing spatial network (4DFlowNet) was re-designed for temporal upsampling, adapting input dimensions, and optimizing internal layer structures. Training and testing were performed using synthetic 4D Flow MRI data originating from patient-specific in-silico models, as well as using in-vivo datasets. Overall, excellent performance was achieved with input velocities effectively denoised and temporally upsampled, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.0 cm/s in an unseen in-silico setting, outperforming deterministic alternatives (linear interpolation MAE = 2.3 cm/s, sinc interpolation MAE = 2.6 cm/s). Further, the network synthesized high-resolution temporal information from unseen low-resolution in-vivo data, with strong correlation observed at peak flow frames. As such, our results highlight the potential of utilizing data-driven neural networks for temporal super-resolution 4D Flow MRI, enabling high-frame-rate flow quantification without extending acquisition times beyond clinically acceptable limits.

cs.LG↗