Keywords: Image acquisition: Artefacts
This educational session will describe the mechanisms behind artifacts that stem from gradient non-linearity, eddy currents, and concomitant gradient fields. Attendees will learn to identify each type of gradient-related artifact, and will learn about methods to mitigate, correct, or avoid them. Distinction will be made between artifacts stemming from gradients used for contrast generation and gradients used for image encoding. For example, diffusion MRI is especially sensitive to gradient-related artefacts due to the use of extremely large gradient amplitudes to sensitize the signal to diffusion.Below are some references for the topics covered. These are not meant to be exhaustive, but are rather for giving a starting point for exploring the literature.
Gradient non-linearity for imaging gradients(Glover and Pelc 1986; Tao et al. 2017) and diffusion(Bammer et al. 2003; Guo et al. 2021; Rudrapatna et al. 2021).
Gradient precompensation for eddy currents (Ahn and Cho 1991).
EPI N/2 ghost correction; 3 line reference scan (Heid 2000), no reference with Ghost/Object minimization (McKay et al. 2019).
Gradient impulse response functions, calibrated using imaging (Duyn et al. 1998; Addy, Wu, and Nishimura 2012; Rahmer et al. 2019) or field probes (Vannesjo et al. 2016).
Concurrent field monitoring with field probes (De Zanche et al. 2008; Barmet, De Zanche, and Pruessmann 2008; Wilm et al. 2015; Barmet et al. 2009; Gilbert et al. 2022).
Diffusion gradient eddy current correction (Jezzard, Barnett, and Pierpaoli 1998; Graham, Drobnjak, and Zhang 2016; Andersson and Sotiropoulos 2016; Valsamis, Dubovan, and Baron 2021).
Concomitant field corrections for image reconstructions: echo-planar imaging (Du, Joe Zhou, and Bernstein 2002), non-Cartesian (Chen, Sica, and Meyer 2008; Cheng, Santos, and Pauly 2011; Wilm, Barmet, and Pruessmann 2012).
Concomitant fields for asymmetric gradient coils (Meier et al. 2008).
Concomitant fields an phase contrast MRI (Bernstein et al. 1998) and diffusion MRI (Baron et al. 2012). Diffusion gradient optimization with consideration of concomitant fields (Peña-Nogales et al. 2019; Szczepankiewicz et al. 2021).
o Addy, Nii Okai, Holden H. Wu, and Dwight G. Nishimura. 2012. “Simple Method for MR Gradient System Characterization and K-Space Trajectory Estimation.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 68 (1): 120–29.
o Ahn, C. B., and Z. H. Cho. 1991. “Analysis of the Eddy-Current Induced Artifacts and the Temporal Compensation in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging.” IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 10 (1): 47–52.
o Andersson, Jesper L. R., and Stamatios N. Sotiropoulos. 2016. “An Integrated Approach to Correction for Off-Resonance Effects and Subject Movement in Diffusion MR Imaging.” NeuroImage 125 (January): 1063–78.
o Bammer, R., M. Markl, A. Barnett, B. Acar, M. T. Alley, N. J. Pelc, G. H. Glover, and M. E. Moseley. 2003. “Analysis and Generalized Correction of the Effect of Spatial Gradient Field Distortions in Diffusion-Weighted Imaging.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 50 (3): 560–69.
o Barmet, Christoph, Nicola De Zanche, and Klaas P. Pruessmann. 2008. “Spatiotemporal Magnetic Field Monitoring for MR.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 60 (1): 187–97.
o Barmet, Christoph, Nicola De Zanche, Bertram J. Wilm, and Klaas P. Pruessmann. 2009. “A Transmit/Receive System for Magnetic Field Monitoring of in Vivo MRI.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 62 (1): 269–76.
o Baron, C. A., R. M. Lebel, A. H. Wilman, and C. Beaulieu. 2012. “The Effect of Concomitant Gradient Fields on Diffusion Tensor Imaging.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 68 (4): 1190–1201.
o Bernstein, M. A., X. J. Zhou, J. A. Polzin, K. F. King, A. Ganin, N. J. Pelc, and G. H. Glover. 1998. “Concomitant Gradient Terms in Phase Contrast MR: Analysis and Correction.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 39 (2): 300–308.
o Chen, Weitian, Christopher T. Sica, and Craig H. Meyer. 2008. “Fast Conjugate Phase Image Reconstruction Based on a Chebyshev Approximation to Correct for B0 Field Inhomogeneity and Concomitant Gradients.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 60 (5): 1104–11.
o Cheng, Joseph Y., Juan M. Santos, and John M. Pauly. 2011. “Fast Concomitant Gradient Field and Field Inhomogeneity Correction for Spiral Cardiac Imaging.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 66 (2): 390–401.
o De Zanche, Nicola, Christoph Barmet, Jurek A. Nordmeyer-Massner, and Klaas P. Pruessmann. 2008. “NMR Probes for Measuring Magnetic Fields and Field Dynamics in MR Systems.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 60 (1): 176–86.
o Du, Yiping P., Xiaohong Joe Zhou, and Matt A. Bernstein. 2002. “Correction of Concomitant Magnetic Field-Induced Image Artifacts in Nonaxial Echo-Planar Imaging.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 48 (3): 509–15.
o Duyn, J. H., Y. Yang, J. A. Frank, and J. W. van der Veen. 1998. “Simple Correction Method for K-Space Trajectory Deviations in MRI.” Journal of Magnetic Resonance 132 (1): 150–53.
o Gilbert, Kyle M., Paul I. Dubovan, Joseph S. Gati, Ravi S. Menon, and Corey A. Baron. 2022. “Integration of an RF Coil and Commercial Field Camera for Ultrahigh-Field MRI.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 87 (5): 2551–65.
o Glover, Gary H., and Norbert J. Pelc. 1986. Method for correcting image distortion due to gradient nonuniformity. USPTO 4591789. US Patent, filed December 23, 1983, and issued May 27, 1986. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4d/02/04/e48e5ecec699c8/US4591789.pdf.
o Graham, Mark S., Ivana Drobnjak, and Hui Zhang. 2016. “Realistic Simulation of Artefacts in Diffusion MRI for Validating Post-Processing Correction Techniques.” NeuroImage 125 (January): 1079–94.
o Guo, Fenghua, Alberto de Luca, Greg Parker, Derek K. Jones, Max A. Viergever, Alexander Leemans, and Chantal M. W. Tax. 2021. “The Effect of Gradient Nonlinearities on Fiber Orientation Estimates from Spherical Deconvolution of Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data.” Human Brain Mapping 42 (2): 367–83.
o Heid, Oliver. 2000. Method for the phase correction of nuclear magnetic resonance signals. USPTO 6043651. US Patent, filed April 8, 1998, and issued March 28, 2000. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/32/57/c8/fe3f3547899705/US6043651.pdf.
o Jezzard, P., A. S. Barnett, and C. Pierpaoli. 1998. “Characterization of and Correction for Eddy Current Artifacts in Echo Planar Diffusion Imaging.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 39 (5): 801–12.
o McKay, Jessica A., Steen Moeller, Lei Zhang, Edward J. Auerbach, Michael T. Nelson, and Patrick J. Bolan. 2019. “Nyquist Ghost Correction of Breast Diffusion Weighted Imaging Using Referenceless Methods.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 81 (4): 2624–31.
o Meier, C., M. Zwanger, T. Feiweier, and D. Porter. 2008. “Concomitant Field Terms for Asymmetric Gradient Coils: Consequences for Diffusion, Flow, and Echo-Planar Imaging.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 60 (1): 128–34.
o Peña-Nogales, Óscar, Yuxin Zhang, Xiaoke Wang, Rodrigo de Luis-Garcia, Santiago Aja-Fernández, James H. Holmes, and Diego Hernando. 2019. “Optimized Diffusion-Weighting Gradient Waveform Design (ODGD) Formulation for Motion Compensation and Concomitant Gradient Nulling.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 81 (2): 989–1003.
o Rahmer, Jürgen, Peter Mazurkewitz, Peter Börnert, and Tim Nielsen. 2019. “Rapid Acquisition of the 3D MRI Gradient Impulse Response Function Using a Simple Phantom Measurement.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 82 (6): 2146–59.
o Rudrapatna, Umesh, Greg D. Parker, Jamie Roberts, and Derek K. Jones. 2021. “A Comparative Study of Gradient Nonlinearity Correction Strategies for Processing Diffusion Data Obtained with Ultra-Strong Gradient MRI Scanners.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 85 (2): 1104–13.
o Szczepankiewicz, Filip, Jens Sjölund, Erica Dall’Armellina, Sven Plein, Jürgen E. Schneider, Irvin Teh, and Carl-Fredrik Westin. 2021. “Motion-Compensated Gradient Waveforms for Tensor-Valued Diffusion Encoding by Constrained Numerical Optimization.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 85 (4): 2117–26.
o Tao, S., J. D. Trzasko, J. L. Gunter, P. T. Weavers, Y. Shu, J. Huston, S. K. Lee, E. T. Tan, and M. A. Bernstein. 2017. “Gradient Nonlinearity Calibration and Correction for a Compact, Asymmetric Magnetic Resonance Imaging Gradient System.” Physics in Medicine and Biology 62 (2): N18–31.
o Valsamis, Jake J., Paul I. Dubovan, and Corey A. Baron. 2021. “Characterization and Correction of Time-Varying Eddy Currents for Diffusion MRI.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, December. https://doi.org/10.1002/mrm.29124.
o Vannesjo, S. Johanna, Nadine N. Graedel, Lars Kasper, Simon Gross, Julia Busch, Maximilian Haeberlin, Christoph Barmet, and Klaas P. Pruessmann. 2016. “Image Reconstruction Using a Gradient Impulse Response Model for Trajectory Prediction.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 76 (1): 45–58.
o Wilm, Bertram J., Christoph Barmet, and Klaas P. Pruessmann. 2012. “Fast Higher-Order MR Image Reconstruction Using Singular-Vector Separation.” IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 31 (7): 1396–1403.
o Wilm, Bertram J., Zoltan Nagy, Christoph Barmet, S. Johanna Vannesjo, Lars Kasper, Max Haeberlin, Simon Gross, et al. 2015. “Diffusion MRI with Concurrent Magnetic Field Monitoring.” Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: Official Journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine / Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 74 (4): 925–33.